The irony of criticizing the overheated rhetoric of your opponents at the same time you call them accomplices to murder apparently was lost on these people, most of whom have never been noted for their subtlety (or civility). It is vile to attempt to tar the opposition with the crimes of a lunatic so as to render illegitimate the views of about half of America.
Jared Loughner is clearly deranged, his fevered mind drawn to irrational extremes, whether those of Adolf Hitler or Karl Marx. He was anti-government the way paranoiacs who think the government is controlling their minds are anti-government — think John Nash, not Milton Friedman. Like the Virginia Tech shooter, Loughner had behaved bizarrely around his fellow students, frightening them. One former high-school classmate remembers him as a liberal, yet given what we’ve learned so far about his ravings, it is doubtful Loughner’s disordered mind was capable of a holding a coherent ideology.
When is the irony not lost. I wonder.
The upshot of the Sheriff/Krugman et al. blaming this on "anti-government vitriol" is simply:
ReplyDeleteGo along with our "transformation" of America and nobody will get hurt.
I.e. the same thing that robbers of banks and 7-11s say.