Re: "the guy was mentally ill, so RW hate speech has nothing to do with this"

[DanTex]

No kidding he was mentally ill.

During the hate speech, people warned: even though the crosshairs and second-amendment remedies and talk of treason and all that might be "metaphorical", there are unstable people out there and the constant flow of violent images and ideas can be dangerous.

The danger was never that some rational, well-adjusted person would, after careful consideration, come to the conclusion that the best course of action is to go on a killing spree.

[bemildred]

1. Now you've done it.

:popcorn:

[emulatorloo]

2. "He was crazy! So crazy that he believed the Crazy Violent Things I said!"

There is a lot of denial going on among the right wing.

As soon as the Obama is Hitler and wants to impose socialism stuff started, it was pretty clear to me that an unstable person was going to take that as a directive to be a "hero".

[Supersedeas]

12. Bingo: which explains the defensiveness of the Corporate Media that made these shockjocks stars

[caledesi]

22. Well said em! nt

[stray cat]

3. I think you have to know whether he heard any right wing hate speech

[backscatter712]

9. Look at his Youtube rants.

Or better yet, the SPLC's analysis of his Youtube rants, which show that he did indeed get a lot of right-wing ideas in his head...

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2011/01/09/who-is-jared-lee-loughner/

There's his talk against "currency not backed by gold and silver" - where've we heard that before?

There's the "government mind control through controlling grammar" which was a conspiracy theory by David Lynn Miller of the Patriot movement.

[Angry Dragon]

10. He could have just talked to people that had

and then told him what they heard.
He may have looked up to these people and trusted their views
So to actually to have seen or read anything personally is not all the point.
The hate speech is out there, did he never hear of any of it??

[liberal N proud]

4. His mental state does not let the right wing hate machine off

If he was mentally ill, it add to the ability to be incited into action.

[stray cat]

5. DU could in theory also then incite violence against blue dogs

[Fleshdancer]

8. How so?

I don't recall DUers talking about targeting and reloading on blue dogs. Are there any links you can provide showing DUers inciting violence on Democrats (or anyone really)?

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[yodermon]

13. No. Such posts are deleted, and repeat offenders would be banned.

[Tsiyu]

15. in some rightwinger's wet dream

not in any real world sense




but thanks for playing....

[Maeve]

6. If you incite violence, you can't disown what happens

Like Igor tormenting the Monster--the blame for the ensuing rampage is not less because "how was I supposed to know the chain would break?"

[alarimer]

7. Exactly.

There are plenty of people in this country who have slipped between the cracks of the mental health care system (shoddy as it is) who take those words seriously. Their ability to reason is seriously flawed. RW hate speech is just ugly anyway and, in my opinion, the REAL reason for incivility in this country. If you want to blame anyone, blame the rightwingers.

[HereSince1628]

16. Need some links

First a link that shows that the ones who slip between the cracks of the mental health care system (you know, the ones we know next to nothing about) have a seriously flawed ability to reason.

Just want to make sure we are aware that mental illness can be as much or more about emotional dysfunction as flawed reason. It sort of depends upon the disorder.

The second link I'd like is one that shows that those who slip between the cracks in the mental health care system are more easily misled to do violence than the rest of the population.

Isn't it curious that the majority of the German population (mostly composed of NOT mentally ill) were led into by a person (A. Hitler) whose mental illness made him so strong he could bend the will of an entire nation? I'd make the same story about Dick Cheney and the Iraq war, we'll see if historians make the same judgment in a few years.

[TalkingDog]

23. Agreed. Numbers don't back up the mental illness = violence prone

Nor is there a correlation between mental illness and the ability to tell right from wrong.

Sweeping generalizations like those have so much wiggle room that the Right will have no problem using those very excuses to acquit themselves.

[kestrel91316]

14. He is mentally ill, not deaf. He heard plenty of voices from the TV and radio,

endlessly telling him to kill liberals. But they weren't a delusion - they were real.

[kctim]

17. Endlessly?

:tinfoilhat:

[kestrel91316]

20. It's been a steady drumbeat for years. Guess you haven't been paying attention.

[kctim]

26. A gasbag says something like that every now and then

hardly an endless drumbeat. But, even if it was an endless drumbeat, why her? She wasn't a liberal, so how was this nut listening to the 'voices' endlessly telling him to kill liberals?

The ONLY thing anybody knows about this is that they must use it any way they can for partisan gain.
Sickening.

[TalkingDog]

18. Hammer: Meet Nail.

The danger was never that some rational, well-adjusted person would, after careful consideration, come to the conclusion that the best course of action is to go on a killing spree.

[ScreamingMeemie]

19. Has that diagnosis been made?

I haven't seen a link to it. I do believe he may be, but we'll have to see, right?

[foxfeet]

24. +1

None of us know what substances he may (or may not) have ingested prior to his youtube rants or badly garbled writings. There's a whole lotta Fristing going on. We need to await a formal mental health evaluation and work-up. I wouldn't be surprised if he is diagnosed with schizophrenia, but we currently lack sufficient information for anything more than suspicion and speculation.

[MadHound]

21. So instead of killing a politician, this man would have killed somebody else

He would have killed a professor, or other fellow students, or somebody else.

Rhetoric of any kind didn't cause this killing, it was the man's mental state that caused this killing. Take away the RW rhetoric, and he would have still killed, just his target might have been different.

[barbiegeek]

25. Read this Thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x163862