Some Observations about the Massacre in Tucson

A few observations about the Tucson massacre:

One of the smartest things I heard from one of Keith Olbermann's guests last night was that it is often enough a false dichotomy to suggest that mental illness cannot coincide with political motives. I do not know whether Loughner is mentally ill--and I am VERY reluctant to attach this term to him unless he really qualifies for it. We are entirely too quick to use this language to describe the character, demeanor, habits of those who do not conform as "nuts."

Having said this, however, even if it turns out that Loughner is rightly--clinically--describable as mentally ill, that in no way means that he is not (a) politically motivated and/or (b) culpable for his actions. The two issues--is he mentally competent? Were his actions politically motivated? must be treated separately--and any answer to one is NOT an answer to the other. Moreover, it seems quite clear that even if he suffers mental impairment, it is NOT like that of, say, Jeff Dahmer.

There is also the very interesting question of what we mean by "politically motivated." This has many possible aspects. The evidence is clearly very murky here so far, but it seems that we can say this much:

1. Little evidence (so far) supports the claim that Loughner was motivated by the obvious hot-button issues like health care or immigration directly. But several of his claims (youtube, etc) Do seem to support the claim that he was profoundly disaffected as a citizen, and some of his language at least indicates that he spent time on radical far right websites (conscious dreaming, for example).

2. That he was not directed to perform this massacre by a group or organization implies (VERY much like the Hasan case) that he cannot rightly be described as a terrorist (note the hypocrisy in our assessments here), but this does not mean , again, that he was not politically motivated. And, like the Hasan case, he may very well be suffering from mental illness AND culpable for his actions.

3. The possibility that there was a second person (shooter? Something else?) strengthens the possibility that there were political motives in that it implies that this was planned more thoroughly--by a cooperation of two people in agreement about some set of motives, not just one--and that they at least considered one another to be sane enough to complete this objective. Who that second person of interest is will, I think, shed much light on this case--not necessarily a light that suggests a political objective, but this seems highly plausible. After all, Giffords was clearly the primary target. This was not a random shooting. And Loughner had approached her before.

4. What constitutes a political objective is a very important question. But I am willing to go to the mat for this claim: Whether or not Loughner had a specific objective in mind whose longer range consequences are explicitly political--like destroying the Congress or fomenting a revolution--is irrelevant. I think it's enough to call it "political"--as opposed, say, to personal, or aesthetic (for example if he imagined himself the Joker) if his objectives were to send a shock wave of anxiety through our elected representatives--if that was his aim, or to send the message that our representatives are precisely the targets Sarah Palin says they are.

Whatever Loughner's specific aims--however he is or isn't psychologically stable--I think a strong case can be made for the claim that the staggeringly violent, vitriolic, dismissive, arrogant, shrill, ignorant, and woefully disconnected from facts rhetoric of GLENN BECK, SARAH PALIN, MICHELLE BACHMAN, BILL O'REILLY, SEAN HANNITY, RUSH LIMBAUGH, ANN COULTER, JAN BREWER, MIKE HUCKABEE, MITCH O'CONNELL, MICHAEL SAVAGE, and many others almost entirely from the FAR TEA PARTY RIGHT aids, abets, encourages, and condones precisely this kind of explosion.

To be clear, I am NOT arguing for anything like censorship. I am as hawkish about free speech as anyone you'll ever meet--but this crazy fucked up idea that speech is "free"--that it hasn't consequences--is one we MUST rethink. SPEECH HAS CONSEQUENCES. DEATH IS ONE OF THEM. THIS YOUNG MAN MURDERED A NINE YEAR OLD.

Loughner may well be psychologically unstable, but my money is on the claim that even if so, his instability had to be channeled down some avenue of violent rhetoric/ideology/fear-mongering to produce THIS action. In some sense, he too is thus a victim--a victim of a climate where we celebrate the lethal combination of arrogance and ignorance and fascist ideological motives as if that was the meaning of "America."

Celebrating the Birth of Tea Party Republican Jesus

Given the seismic shift from a democratic majority to the Tea Party-Republicans about to rock the congress; given that the overwhelming majority of those responsible for this hard-right sea-change claim to be Christians; given that Christmas in upon us, I am moved—forced really—to contemplate the possibility that the Jesus whose birth these Christians claim to celebrate is not the Jesus of the New Testament.

New Testament Jesus was partisan, to be sure, partisan of compassion, decency, honor, honesty, courage, patience, and justice. NT-Jesus was a socialist. TPR-Jesus, well, he’s a different sort of “savior,” with a testament beholden to some different “virtues.” What do we celebrate in His birth? Who is blessed of TPR-Jesus?

Blessed are the 3000 mega-wealthy American families, for they shall inherit the earth, (such as it is), and get to be called the “job creators” even though their millions rest contentedly in off-shore accounts, their portfolios are lined with gold (real patriots don’t bet on recovery, silly!), and their wealth is almost entirely inherited—not earned.

Blessed are the “free,” for, however poor, sick, or hopeless, those millions of Big-Box, Big-Factory, Big-Fast-Food workers are lucky to live in America where the right to go without food (except, of course, cheap, nutrient-wasteland, Mc’Fatty “food”), or, for want of basic healthcare, die, or who get to watch their children die, is guaranteed. Free: better to get to “choose” a doctor you can’t afford to see than be identified as a socialist who, under “Obamacare,” might actually get to see one!

Blessed are the climate-change deniers, for TPR-Jesus loves most those—Limbaugh-Beck-Hannity-O’Reilly-Inhoff-Bachmann-Palin-Paul—who think Him so omnipotent that nothing we do to His creation can damage it. Venerating TPR-Jesus is certainly more important than yielding to inconvenient truths about deforestation, pollution, desertification, soil erosion, and species extinction. Who makes more sense? Those pesky scientists from geology, meteorology, chemistry, or climatology—or the CEO’s of Exxon, BP, Monsato, Dow, Union-Carbide, or the Koch Brothers? Who does TPR-Jesus stand with? The winners, of course (see above).

Blessed are the bigots, for these “birthers,” “Anti-Islamo-fascists,” “I-got-ur-civil-rights-right’ere” “Constitutionalists,” protect “us” against “them” brown, and/or undocumented and/or Muslim and/or poor, and/or queer not-quite-people. What’s more TPR-Jesus than signing a promise that you’ll do everything you g-damn well can to get rid of the (black) president—no matter what the cost to, say, “the people,” or, well, the not-quite-people? What’s more compassionate than—like the prophet O’Reilly recently opined—limiting our compassion? More courageous than holding the most vulnerable of American citizens hostage to the wealthiest, whitest 1%?

Blessed are the xenophobes, for TPR-Jesus loves America more than any other country, so much so that He made sure (Citizens United) that gazillions in foreign currency can be spent keeping his chosen representatives in power, that waging war in the name of “national interest” was a god-given right (especially if the dead are mostly not-quite-people—see above), and that “shoot-on-sight” is really just a call to the Christian (border) soldier.

If you’re TPR-Jesus, you have loads to celebrate this year—indifference, vulgarity, dishonor, dishonesty, cowardice, intolerance, and injustice. In fact, New Years looks even better than Christmas. After all, the TPR-faithful have managed to convince those who have the most to lose in the coming tsunami-of-“freedom” that they’re better off without economic safety nets, social security, health care, or decent jobs. So, Merry Christmas, Tea-Party-Jesus, and Happy New Year’s to the 1%, the birthers, the xenophobes, the climate change deniers, and the bigots. You indeed have inherited the (scorched) earth (see above).

Wendy Lynne Lee
wlee@bloomu.edu (587 words)

Race-Baiting and the Far Right: The Obscene Assault on Barack Obama

It’s both astonishing and telling that among the questions far-right pundits like Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Don Feder, David Horowitz, and Ann Coulter fail to ask about Barack Obama’s pastor Jeremiah Wright is whether Wright isn’t in fact right with respect to some of his claims about race relations in America.

So preoccupied with the opportunity to reign in Obama’s popularity through guilt by association, so stupified with indignance at the suggestion that African Americans still face racism in “our” America, so thrilled at the possibility that McCain could beat Clinton if she’s the democratic nominee, these self-appointed profits of righteousness are tripping over each other to trash Obama.

It doesn’t matter to the pundits whether Wright’s claims are true; all they needed to be was critical of the government, or of five years in Iraq, or of the ever-widening gap between the wealthy and the poor—all they needed to be was about the racial divide that still exists in America—and it was as if they’d been handed a noose. Ugly image? You bet; as ugly as it’s true.

More than merely reprehensible, the glee with which the far right has participated in this political lynching reveals just how opportunistic the conservative-controlled media like FOX “news” really is. And worse: their remarks exemplify the very bigotry which accrues to the willful forgetting of history in the interest of insisting that the playing field has been leveled. They know it’s not, and they know we needn’t return to slavery to substantiate it—the Bush Administration’s tardy and inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina’s quite convincing. Perhaps the pundits need to think that they’re victims of “reverse discrimination” to preserve the myth of their own entitlement. What’s certain is that when Sean Hannity implies that an Obama presidency is tantamount to having the Black Panther Party in the White House, he’s race-baiting.

No doubt, some of Wright’s claims are false; the Reagan administration, for example, surely lacked the competence to have created the AIDS virus to commit genocide. But the falsity of some of Wright’s claims is not the discrediting of them all, and we need look little further than our own local paper’s 30 Seconds to discover, for example, the ease with which a middle name can be deployed as a weapon when the candidate’s a black man.

It’s no accident that the firestorm over Wright comes on the brink of the Pennsylvania primary, but it’s hypocrisy at its most loathsome. John McCain accepts the endorsement of John Hagee who claims, among other absurdities, that Katrina was God’s punishment for sexual sin in New Orleans and that it’s a mandate of Islam to kill Christians (www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/28/hagee/index). Why aren’t the pundits condemning McCain? Is Hagee’s hateful god their god? Is it irrelevant whether Wright speaks truth to justice so long as the party of war, government corporatism, and religious fascism remains in power?

Whoever your candidate come April 22nd, Obama’s eloquent response to this calculated assault on his character exemplifies not what a Hagee or Coulter would do, but rather what a Jesus would do, namely, decency. Rising above the race-baiting, Obama spoke of his church’s ministry to the poor; he spoke as if we cared about justice; he spoke of his family, his pastor, his country. Obama knows as well as do his critics that what he represents is an America whose face isn’t one color, one religion, one language, one sex, and this must scare the “begeebers” out of those who think they’re discriminated against when they don’t get to have it all.

Wendy Lynne Lee
wlee@bloomu.edu

Response to Berwick Realist: It's Our Freedom that's at Stake

Although I wonder if he’s kidding, “Berwick Realist” (BR) repeats himself often enough that—although only anonymously—(s)he apparently wants to be taken seriously. The upshot of BR’s remarks is that, whatever the critic’s nay-saying, we’ve suffered no loss of civil liberty under the Bush administration, and that those who think so stand among the deluded “liberals,” “socialists,” and “America-haters.”

It’s easy to show that this is drivel. As writer Naomi Wolf documents in painful detail in The End of America, our Constitutional liberties have never in our history seen so systematic and brutal an assault as they have under the authoritarian “security-industrial complex” of the Bush regime. For those unconvinced, I recommend her discussions of the suspension of Habeas Corpus, the harassment of journalists, the control of the media through monopolizing conglomerates like FOX, unwarranted spying on private citizens, the explicit flouting of the Geneva Conventions, not-so-secret foreign prisons—and torture (p. 52-68).

The erosion of our first amendment rights is clear: the actual torture of anyone is the threat to torture—anyone, and if we think we’re safe because we’re good citizens, we’re simply being naïve. As Wolf shows, “enemy combatant” knows no national boundaries; freedom of speech critical of the government died with the Patriot Act.

But perhaps BR is a victim of the spin to which our language has been subjected in recent years in the interest of concealing the truth, creating an inhuman enemy, or diluting the facts so thoroughly that we just don’t get, for example, that phrases like “axis of evil,” “Islamofascism,”and “war on terror” are intended to keep us paralyzed by the fear of some coming Armageddon.

Don’t we get it that the spin-masters who create bigger-than-life-evil-super-power nemeses for us are making whopping big bucks off the manufacture of a culture of war-mongering—all at our expense? Are we so occupied with American Idol that we just don’t care that our kids are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan for nothing but the profits spun out of “Rumfeld-stiltskin” hype? THINK: is the reporting of facts unfavorable to the government treason? Rupert Murdock thinks so. Are critics “enemies of the people”? Ask Sean Hannity. Does “war-footing” justify the complete suspension of the rights of people deemed “enemy combatants”? Ask Bill O’Reilly. Are professors who challenge their students to critically evaluate their government’s actions a danger to civil order? Ask David Horowitz.

This isn’t to say, of course, that we don’t have enemies or that there aren’t real issues to confront. Indeed, I can think of nothing more threatening to global stability than religious extremism. The theocrats within our borders who’d dictate what our children can read, what counts as science, whom we can love, what women ought to aspire to, and who can represent God are the ideological soul mates of the Jihadists.

Wouldn’t it be ironic—and tragic—were we to forfeit our democracy in the very course of defending it from those enemies? This is what we’re doing, whether BR gets it or not. While we reel between the “Renew America” evangelicals and the corporate pirates of the Bush administration, our infrastructure erodes, millions go without health care, our environment deteriorates, and our civil liberties languish; yet we dump trillions into a war for a fuel that’s literally going the way of the dinosaur. We can’t afford BR’s blinders. If we give up the liberty for which our country stands, we will have nothing left at the end of this misbegotten war but spin—and it can’t possibly pay the debt on the lives lost to it.