Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining. That is what the purveyors false equivalency are trying to do.
I listened to Scarborough, and all about how the Giffords shooting "everybody's fault" and how we are just as responsible for the heated rhetoric on the Left as is the Right. And it is all horsepuckey. A clear line can be drawn between the destructive language of the Right and this atrocity.
Trying to take the politics away from the Giffords assassination is like taking the water out of whiskey. Without one the other doesn't exist. It was a politician who was shot. One who had definite political views in a state where the politics is highly volatile. One who had definite political views at a time that is highly volatile. I cannot say that I agree with everything Gabby Giffords has stood for. I am not a gun control partisan, or a Blue Dog in any way. But there two things that I know: one is that she voted for healthcare, which puts her in the Right Wing's crosshairs, and the other is that the incendiary actions and language of the Right can be associated with violent consequences when the motivation of their perpetrators is examined.
Since the first accusations by Palin of Obama "palling around with terrorists," and cries of "kill him" from McCain / Palin audiences, the rhetoric on the Right has been shocking. The crescendo began when Rush Limbaugh bounced up and down at the CPAC convention saying: "I hope he (Obama) fails!" The fear that a black President was transforming the country into something that they wouldn't recognize certainly was putting the reactionary paranoia on steroids. And so, the Tea Party was born.
And the rhetoric got only worse.
August 6, 2009, Glenn Beck poisons Nancy Pelosi on air, in effigy:
I really just wanted to thank you for having me over here to wine country. You know, to be invited, I thought I had to be a major Democratic donor or a longtime friend of yours, which I'm not.
By the way, I put poison in your -- no, I -- I look forward to all the policy discussions that we're supposed to have -- you know, on health care, energy reform, and the economy.
Michelle Bachmann as well was full of incendiary and provocative language that left very little for conjecture:
In 2009 this is what she said about environmental legislation:
I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us 'having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,' and the people - we the people - are going to have to fight back hard if we're not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States.
And here is Bachmann on the repeal of healthcare last December:
If they don't I think there needs to be an insurrection here in Washington, D.C against our own leadership--because that is the message that's come loud and clear out of this election: a full scale repudiation and rejection of the federal government takeover of private industry.
As the summer went on, the healthcare battle heated up when Representatives went back home to hear from their constituents in town hall type meetings. Instead, they got an astroturfing that had every sign of being orchestrated as Tea Partyers systematically disrupted otherwise peaceful gatherings to frighten their elected officials.
In my own district, Dan Maffei was forced to change his format for meeting with people because of the chaos that the astroturfers caused:
Tempers boiled over at Lincoln Middle School as those representing extremes in the national health care debate disrupted a standing-room-only meeting of almost 400 people.
Maffei, after returning to Washington on Tuesday, said he wants to come up with a format that will allow everyone to speak and discuss ideas in a respectful fashion -- without partisan bickering and heckling.
"This has been a problem going on a little bit with our public meetings," said Maffei, D-DeWitt. "It just makes me think we can do a better job with the format.
If anyone thinks that this was an isolated incident, then perhaps they peruse should this smoking gun. The Fairfield County Connecticut Tea Partyput out this Political Action Memo in May 2009 after a coordinated action during Jim Himes's Town Hall meeting:
- You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep’s presentation. Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep’s statements early. If he blames Bush for something or offers other excuses – call him on it, yell back and have someone else follow-up with a shout-out. Don’t carry on and make a scene – just short intermittent shout outs. The purpose is to make him uneasy early on and set the tone for the hall as clearly informal, and free-wheeling. It will also embolden others who agree with us to call out and challenge with tough questions. The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda. If he says something outrageous, stand up and shout out and sit right down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions."
Keep body language neutral and look positive to improve chances of being selected.
The balance of the group should applaud when the question is asked, further putting the Rep on the defensive. If the Rep tries a particularly odious diversion, someone from the group should yell out to answer the question. These tactics will clearly rattle the Rep and illustrate some degree of his ineptness to the balance of the audience.
I don’t expect any unsavory behavior from Westport or Greenwich folks but be reminded Tea Party Patriots have no tolerance for despicable behavior.
The progressives will do anything they can to incite the riot. They can not pick a fight with some one who will not participate.
Nancy Pelosi proved this. Walking through the crowd, she could not even get a tomato tossed at her. The tea party movement rocks!
Cameras will be rolling all day recording one historic moment after the next. Be aware, be safe!
How odd that that last pair of paragraphs sits dissonantly with the rest! They seem to be almost an afterthought - put in to cover one's butt since the riot was already underway at those town hall meetings without any progressive assistance.
Now, I'm not entirely sure that Stochastic Terrorism can be effectively proved since this requires establishment of intent, albeit of a general nature. I haven't read Glenn Beck's or Limbaugh's diaries. But the connection of wildly irresponsible incendiary talk to incidents of political violence are not that hard to prove. Motivation can usually be proved in the case of skinhead or lone wolf terrorism by uncovering the contacts the perpetrator had by association, or the media.
There has always been incendiary media inciting people to violence. But now it seems that the fringe has become the mainstream here. This isn't Stormfront, the Sons of Silence or the White Aryan Resistance we are talking about here, or any other Swastika-laden, jack-booted thugfest here. What we have here is a so-called mainstream movement whose leaders are going just to the edge of the cliff with violent metaphors, and then act surprised when someone takes them literally and goes over.
Well, here are a few examples of violence that can be connected to Right Wing incendiary speech:
Byron Williams's attack on the Tides Foundation certainly points to a cause and effect relationship between Glenn Beck's screeds against this organization and Williams:
It’s not definitively known what caused Williams to target the Tides Foundation, which is little known to the general public. But, as it turns out, the foundation had been attacked verbally on repeated occasions by Glenn Beck of Fox News, who sees Tides as a sinister organization, hell-bent on destroying capitalism. A review by the liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America found that between Jan. 19, 2009 — when Beck’s TV show debuted — and the July 18 California shootout, Tides was mentioned on 29 editions of his program, as well as on two occasions by Beck’s Fox News colleague Sean Hannity. Media Matters could not find a single mention of Tides on ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC or PBS during those 18 months.
Of course, Beck would deny any connection, and he may even believe his denial to be true, but unfortunately from his mouth to Williams's ear clings a Tar Baby so adhesive that he can't for the life of him roll out of it.
The embodiment of this, of course, is Byron Williams' Glenn-Beck-inspired planned armed assault on the Tides Foundation. As Williams put it:
'You know, I'll tell you," he says, "Beck is gonna deny everything about violent approach and deny everything about conspiracies, but he'll give you every reason to believe it. He's protecting himself, and you can't blame him for that. So, I understand what he's doing.'
Beck, Palin, Limbaugh and Co. will stand there, flash their rosy cheeks and baby blue eyes and deny that their continuous pyrotechnics don't hit the kerosene, but these Innocent Bystanders seem to have the rotten luck of consistently bad timing. By some strange coincidence, no one ever seems to attribute any lethal violence to Leftist rhetoric, but as with Li'l Abner's Sorrowful Jones, Beck, Palin, Limbaugh and Co., just have the knack of causing lethal trouble.
That doesn’t prove that Williams was targeting Tides because of Beck’s continual carping about the foundation. But Williams’ mother told the San Francisco Chronicle that her unemployed son had been watching television news and was upset by “the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items.
Just four days before the Oakland shootout, Beck was on the air suggesting the foundation was all about seizing power. A day before that, Beck said the foundation “saw under Ronald Reagan that capitalists were not for all this nonsense, so they infiltrated. Now, they are using failing capitalism to destroy it.” In a June broadcast, Beck said that a Tides-funded video was shown in schools throughout America “to warp your children’s brains and make sure they know how evil capitalism is.” In May, Beck proclaimed Tides a “really shady organization.
And what is the best response that Lonesome Mr. Rhodes can give to show that Progressives are just as irresponsible in their use of rhetoric? Why of course he has to pick on a little old lady who forty five years ago co-wrote an article with her husband on political action to help the poor, and used this one sentence in a recent article:
An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees.
Jared Loughner was not "all over the place" in his basic views. As he showed on his videos, there is clear influence by the Sovereign Citizen faction of the Right. The Sovereigns believe that if they can conceptually redefIne all aspects of social and legal interaction by personally customizing the language structure, they can free themselves from the system which takes advantage of them.
For instance, to the Sovereign, we are all prisoners of the tax system. They've got us by everything. Our social security number, license number - everything! But, if we change our names in the Sovereign fashion, we are freed from paying our taxes. If we use the right kind of sentence structure and vocabulary we could emancipate ourselves from the legal system.
Much has been made of a connection between one of the Sovereign's leading spokesmen David Wynn Miller who is the major proponent of this concept:
Miller is from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and he describes himself as a "Plenipotentiary-Judge", an ambassador, banker, postmaster,[7] King of Hawaii, and a genius.[8][9][10]
On April 6, 1988, Miller invented what he calls the Mathematical Interface for Language or Quantum-Math-Communications and Language[11] or Correct-Language.[12] According to Miller, his language is "for the stopping-claims of the Theft, Cheating, Fraud, Slavery and War."[11] Miller's language uses sentences that begin with prepositional phrases, using the word For, are at least thirteen words long, and have many more nouns than verbs. According to Miller, only nouns have legal authority. The language has an abundance of punctuation. Miller explains:
FOR THE FORMS OF OUR PUNCTUATIONS ARE WITH THE CLAIM OF THE USE: FULL-COLON=POSITION-LODIO-FACTS, HYPHEN=COMPOUND-FACTS =KNOWN, PERIOD=END-THOUGHT, COMMA-PAUSE, AND LOCATION-TILDES WITH THE MEANINGS AND USES OF THE COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE FULL-COLON OF THE POSITION-LODIAL-FACT-PHRASE WITH THE FACT/KNOWN-TERM OF THE POSITIONAL-LODIO-FACT-PHRASE AND WITH THE VOID OF THE NOM-DE-GUERRE = DEAD-PERSON.[11]
According to Miller's teaching, the addition of hyphens and colons to one's name turns one from an ordinary, taxable human into a non-taxable “prepositional phrase.” They are distinguished from the names listed at birth in all capital letters (as on a birth certificate), which he claims turns one into a taxable Person (Corporation). (i.e. DAVID WYNN MILLER as opposed to :David-Wynn: Miller
Compare this to an excerpt from one of Loughner's videos:
If I teach a mentally capable 8 year old for 20 consecutive minutes to replace an alphabet letter with a new letter and pronounciation then the mentally capable 8 year old writes and pronounces the new letter and pronunciation that's replacing an alphabet letter in 20 consecutive minutes.
I teach a mentally capable 8 year old for 20 consecutive minutes to replace an alphabet letter with a new letter and pronounciation.
Thus, the mentally capable 8 year old writes and pronounces the new letter and pronunciation that's replacing an alphabet letter in 20 consecutive minutes.
Every human who's mentally capable is always able to be treasurer of their new currency.
If you create one new currency then you're able to create a second new currency.
If you're able to create second new currency then you're able to create third new currency.
You create one new currency.
Thus, you're able to create a third currency.
You're a treasurer for a new currency, listener?
You create and distribute your new currency, listener?
You don't allow the government to control your grammar structure, listener?
If you create one new language then you're able to create a second new language.
If you're able to create a second new language then you're able to create a third new language.
You create one new hanguage.
Thus, you're able to create a third new language.
All humans are in need of sleep.
Jared Loughner is a human.
Hence, Jared Loughner is in need of sleep.
An example of the Sovereign Citizen philosophy was in a legal matter that occurred in British Columbia where a man said he shouldn't have to pay taxes because he wasn't a real person.
David-Kevin: Lindsay —' as he calls himself, appealed a five-month jail sentence for not paying taxes saying that he doesn't meet the legal definition of a person.
He was also fined $5000 for five counts of failing to file income tax returns.
'Lindsay calls himself the "Unlicenced Man" and tours the country, giving seminars on what he refers to as "the tax freedom movement" where he argues that "taxation is theft.'
'He presents very elaborate, lengthy, intricate arguments that the word 'person' as used in the (Tax) Act has a special meaning, that he is entitled to remove himself from that definition, and that he has done so,' B.C. Supreme Court Justice Frits Verhoeven wrote in a recent judgment after hearing Lindsay's appeal. 'He contends that in 1996 he ceased to be a 'person' within the meaning of the act. He admits that he has not filed a tax return since that time.'
The sentence of the lower court was upheld, though the jail time was reduced to one more day because the defendant was a first offender.
And then there was the case of Steven Magritz of Wisconsin who believed that he could supply his own legal paperwork.
Magritz filed involuntary bankruptcy petitions against a number of county officials, and also filed bogus liens against each official alleging they owed him $15 million.
The bankruptcy petitions caused some officials' credit cards to be canceled, almost caused the sale of one supervisor's house to be stopped, and caused continuing credit problems for other officials.
So someone explain to me how it is that the Right Wing media is in any way lily white when it comes to Right Wing violence? When you breathe fire on the gasoline of an angry movement, someone is bound to get crazy.
If there ever was Left Wing terrorism, it died a generation ago with Baader - Meinhof and the Red Army Faction. The last American Left Wing terrorists were the Symbionese Liberation Army. All the Weathermen went to ground, and stopped that lifestyle if they didn't renounce it. But the Klan always continued, and new fringe organizations on the Right popped up in the Eighties. And the Survivalist movement gave them guns and a template for their ideology. That and a paranoid reaction to the Clinton administration lead to the militia movement of the nineties, a movement that only lay dormant during Dubya's days, and now fully revived.
And before anyone goes to bed tonight thinking that in this "new era of civility" that we have dodged a bullet, remember that we already know how bad the worst can get. From Posse Comitatis, through the Montana Free Men, Ruby Ridge, Waco and finally Timothy McVeigh and Oklahoma City, we have seen what extreme Right Wing ideology does when combined with violence. It can only kill. And yes, I'll even say that 9/11 was a result of a form of Right Winglike ideology. I went there! And the one thing that from every one of 4000 dead in Manhattan to the victims in Waco, Oklahoma City, Christina Green in Tucson and lonely Mathew Sheppard had in common was that they all died as a result of unstable minds influenced by toxic Right Wing bile.