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Sarah Palin, Tea Party, Right Wing Trying To Run From Rhetoric, AZ Shooting
01/09/11-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
In the wake of the Arizona shooting deaths of three, there has been a lot made about the motives of Jared Lee Loughner, the alleged shooter, and a lot of people pushing back against the anger that is coming from people directed towards the Right over their rhetoric. This has included statements from dismissing what Loughner wrote as being nothing but hoaxes to attempts to foist this off on the Left all the while ignoring the rhetoric that has come out of the Right over the last two years.
Among the things that Loughner wrote was this little bit as reported via Talking Points Memo:
A series of YouTube videos apparently posted by Loughner can also be found. In the videos — text on a black background with music playing beneath — Loughner accuses the government of “mind control” and “brainwashing.”
In the videos, Loughner rambles about the government and mind control as well as grammar.
“You’re a treasurer for a new currency, listener? You create and distribute your new currency, listener?” he writes. “You don’t allow the government to control your grammar structure, listener?”
Loughner also attacks the Constitution, as well as — it seems — a currency not backed by the gold standard.
“In conclusion, reading the second United States Constitution, I can’t trust the current government because of the ratifications. The government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar,” he writes.
“No! I won’t pay debt with a currency that’s not backed by gold and silver!” Loughner writes. “No! I won’t trust in God!”
While they are the ravings of a mad man, let us not forget that they do have an origin. For instance, this is from Ron Paul’s Congressional Website:
“If our money were backed by gold and silver, people couldn’t just sit in some fancy building and push a button to create new money. They would have to engage in honest trade with another party that already has some gold in their possession. Alternatively, they would have to risk their lives and assets to find a suitable spot to build a gold mine, then get dirty and sweaty and actually dig up the gold. Not something I can imagine our ‘money elves’ at the Fed getting down to whenever they feel like playing God with the economy.”
Glenn Beck has become famous for shilling gold on his shows. Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, even got in on the act with this:
“The price of gold today is at $1,368.90 an ounce, and during the 2-hour finale of “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” you’ll join us as we find gold. When William Seward purchased the Alaska territory from Russia in 1867, he knew that our natural resources and strategic location would help secure the nation. We show more of Alaska’s potential in Sunday night’s final episode at 8pm ET on TLC.”
As for Loughner’s obsession with mind control via grammar, a simple search of Google produces some very interesting results including one that is titled “The NPR PC Thought Police Just Martyed Juan Williams”, “White Civil Rights >> Don Imus: Latest Victim Of PC Thought Police”, and “Leftist Feminist Exposes P.C. Thought Police.” The phrase PC Thought Police has been used for at least a decade by the Right to attack the Left and political correctness. Basically, the accusation is that the government is trying to control what people think through altering their grammar and vocabulary.
Then there is just the normal militaristic rhetoric.
This is from Sharron Angle via the Washington Post in June of 2010:
“You know, our Founding Fathers, they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. And in fact Thomas Jefferson said it’s good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years.
“I hope that’s not where we’re going, but, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.”
And this is a report from March 2010 via Raw Story about Sarah Palin’s statements and her map, both of which have been expunged now.
“Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has now done her part to raise the rhetorical intensity, telling her Twitter followers, “Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: ‘Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!’”
Palin then refers supporters to her Facebook page, where she once again employs gun imagery in offering a list of 20 potentially vulnerable pro-reform Democrats in Congress.
“We’re paying particular attention to those House members who voted in favor of Obamacare and represent districts that Senator John McCain and I carried during the 2008 election,” Palin writes. “We’ll aim for these races and many others.” This is followed by a map of the United States showing gun crosshairs over the targeted districts.
Sarah Palin called them gun sights, but an aid to her is now trying to call them surveyor’s marks. TPM is reporting that Palin aid Rebecca Mansour said:
“I don’t understand how anybody could be held responsible for somebody who is completely mentally unstable like this. Where I come from the person that is actually shooting is the one that’s culpable,” Mansour said, before intimating that the suspect, Jared Loughner, is actually a liberal. “It seems that he people that knew him said that he was left-wing and very liberal — but that is not to say that I am blaming the left.”
“I never went out and blamed Al Gore or any environmentalist for the crazy insane person who went to shoot up the Discovery Channel,”
She tried to claim “We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights. It was simply cross-hairs like you’d see on maps.” When was the last time you saw cross hairs on a map?
Right now, it is hard for the Right to distance themselves from the rhetoric of the past even as they plan to. As Palin scrubs her site of all references to cross hairs and reloading, that information is spreading like wildfire. While this was not the intended result, it was the end result no matter what. Eventually, someone who is deranged or unhinged believes the rhetoric and picks up a gun.
MattyDaily over at YouTube posted the following video. He is getting a lot of push back from the Right for his statements. Dekerivers describes the video thusly:
From a young man on You Tube……the BEST thing I have read or seen yet today….about Sarah Palin and the shooting in Tucson. The shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords that Sarah Palin can not wash her hands from.
For those of us who are tired of the pushback, please let Daily know that he is not alone in standing up against this kind of rhetoric. His YouTube page is here.
See Also Let The Spin Begin….
Related articles
- Sarah Palin Pulls PAC Target List Including Giffords (lezgetreal.com)
- No Second Season for “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” (lezgetreal.com)
6 Responses to Sarah Palin, Tea Party, Right Wing Trying To Run From Rhetoric, AZ Shooting
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Denise
January 12, 2011 at 12:15 pm
Awesome Article. Loved your breakdown! I have shared this on my Facebook and twitter accounts. I can’t believe that some believe that this guy was a Liberal! Fox has so many brainwashed that there is no questioning them for the Sheep of America. The Show Me, or Prove it, Progressive American such as I am Living in AZ won’t believe the Fox Rhetoric. Too bad we(AZ Dems) can vote out these pundits & negative Republicans in AZ but I do believe more rational people in the remaining country will have to be our conscience. I pray for Congresswoman Gifford, those hurt, and to the families of those murdered on Saturday in Tuson.
jhou
January 10, 2011 at 1:14 am
funny…nice try…
Jared Loghner belongs to you, not the conservatives…
Bridgette P. LaVictoire
January 10, 2011 at 8:52 am
Jacob,
No. He belongs to you. Trying to pull this just won’t work any more. If he belonged to us, it would have been a Republican who was attacked, not a Democrat. You are so desperate now to run from this that you cannot accept the reality.
You want to believe that he is a Leftist because you believe that only a Leftist would do this. That Loughner was crazy is beyond a doubt, but his rhetoric belongs to you guys. His is the same anti-government, anti-Liberal, pro-gold rhetoric that is being spewed by the Right lately. You just want to deny that.
kehfoefh maier cain
January 10, 2011 at 12:36 am
Calls to reload and to put in the fireline of a gun may give some people prone to violence the feeling that if a former candidate to the US presidency can utter such threats and recommendations, it is quite Ok for them to act on their recommendations. If he is inclined by the tone of those who suggest them to target political adversaries and to get rid of them and leave no clue that the threat is not meant literally, and all hints that it may be taken literally, a not so smart and/or a resentful person may not doubt a bit that the message was to be meant literally. If on top of that, the potential killer is immersed in and exposed to a milieu full of angry words and outbursts of rage and possibly aggressive intents and actions against a specific man or woman or a specific party, and if a hit list is being circulated by media and from ear to mouth, then the future killer may fill legitimated by seemingly like minded people and encouraged to pursue his murderous project in the genuine belief that he is doing the right thing, that he is the victim although he is the one who assaults the others verbally and physically, that the bad guy is not the one who kills, propagates hatred speech and harasses the others, bu the one who is killed, inujred, insulted, denigrated, grossly accused of being the evil-doer, the unamerican treator, the one who had it coming. As for the soon to be criminal, he BEVIEVES. He has the deep entranched and self-righteous belief, possibly under the auspice of God that his holy duty to act here and now, that he will be secretely or openly applauded by those like minded people. Besides, reading Hitler, Marx and Plato does not make an American an unbeliever, nor does it make unbelievers people that should be killed because they are unbelievers. Calling names and crying for vengeance is not a sign of open-mindedness, not smartness. It is easier that to think coldly and carefully. Differing does not make anybody an ennemy, let alone a liberal. All those who are convinced that they are always and in all issues right against all those who disagree are already displaying the distinctive properties of mind limitations. Reading from the reactions of some bloggers supportive of tea party and tea partiers, one can sense the feeling of outrage against those who are pointing fingers at their heated and bellicose rhetoric. It is quite normal that they refuse to contemplate a possible family resemblance between their angry words and actions and the angry action of a killer and that they deny that repeating at length on the waves, in the newspaper, in the blogosphere, at meetings, the same slogan inviting their members to attack on and on, can have no effect whatsoever on the listeners. But then one wonders, why do they speak like that if they think it is useless. If they speak as they do, it is precisely because they think and hope rightly that their message will be heard; as such they have their share of responsibillity in the chain reaction they trigger. Imagine if they were repeating all the time such impractical talks such as “Love your enemy” “if you receive a slap on the cheek, turn the other one”. Of course, none of those who throw verbal missiles at those who disagree with them, would take seriously such utterances. And yet, words kill too, that is why verbal assault is deemed to be a crime. Overt and covert calls to kill and murder a person who do not share one’s views are tapping in the same basic repertoire of instincts, i.e. fear and aggressiveness, the two emotions that caracterise fundamentalist minds who know no doubt; Sadly, doubt is the very sign of true intelligence. Having no doubt and being self-righteous is the feeling that makes pulling the trigger and shouting threats easy and even an act of heroism.
Bridgette P. LaVictoire
January 10, 2011 at 8:55 am
Thank you.
Loughner was crazy, but he was influenced by what he heard, which included a lot of anti-government rhetoric. A lot of the rhetoric seems and sounds crazy, and in the wrong mind, it creates violence.
Dina
January 9, 2011 at 8:14 pm
Wow, seriously great article. Wonderful breakdown of the issues.