George Will writes one of the best pieces on the tragedy in Tucson I have yet seen:
It would be merciful if, when tragedies such as Tucson’s occur, there were a moratorium on sociology. But respites from half-baked explanations, often serving political opportunism, are impossible because of a timeless human craving and a characteristic of many modern minds.
The craving is for banishing randomness and the inexplicable from human experience. Time was, the gods were useful. What is thunder? The gods are angry. Polytheism was explanatory. People postulated causations.
And still do. Hence: The Tucson shooter was (pick your verb) provoked, triggered, unhinged by today’s (pick your noun) rhetoric, vitriol, extremism, “climate of hate.”
Demystification of the world opened the way for real science, including the social sciences. And for a modern characteristic. And for charlatans.
A characteristic of many contemporary minds is susceptibility to the superstition that all behavior can be traced to some diagnosable frame of mind that is a product of promptings from the social environment. From which flows a political doctrine: Given clever social engineering, society and people can be perfected. This supposedly is the path to progress. It actually is the crux of progressivism. And it is why there is a reflex to blame conservatives first.
~~~Now we have explainers. They came into vogue with the murder of President Kennedy. They explained why the “real” culprit was not a self-described Marxist who had moved to Moscow, then returned to support Castro. No, the culprit was a “climate of hate” in conservative Dallas, the “paranoid style” of American (conservative) politics or some other national sickness resulting from insufficient liberalism.
~~~…This McCarthyism of the left – devoid of intellectual content, unsupported by data – is a mental tic, not an idea but a tactic for avoiding engagement with ideas. It expresses limitless contempt for the American people, who have reciprocated by reducing liberalism to its current characteristics of electoral weakness and bad sociology.
And it appears this mental tic will not be ending soon, they are seeking to avoid engagement and instead are trying to spin the murders to electoral success:
One veteran Democratic operative, who blames overheated rhetoric for the shooting, said President Barack Obama should carefully but forcefully do what his predecessor did. “They need to deftly pin this on the tea partiers,” said the Democrat. “Just like the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the militia and anti-government people.”
And it doesn’t stop there:
Paul Begala, one of Clinton’s top political advisers during the 1990s, thinks Obama has a genuine opportunity to re-define the nation’s political debate – a promise he first made in his breakout 2004 speech to the Democratic convention —and reclaim moral high ground lost during the last two years of intense partisan combat.
“One of the things I learned from Oklahoma City is not to rush to judgment…We don’t know this Arizona animal’s motive,” said Begala.
“But almost irrespective of that, it wouldn’t hurt for all of us to tone things down a bit – myself included. If the President uses this tragedy to challenge us all to move to higher ground, it would be a welcome message. And if the right tries to demonize him for doing that, they will look small and petty and extreme.”
Veteran Democratic consultant Dan Gerstein said the crisis “really plays to Obama’s strengths as consensus-builder” and gives him the opportunity to build a deeper emotional connection with the people he governs.
But wait…tone it down? Did the left do anything to “tone it down” when someone named Bush was in office? How about some flashbacks, courtesy of Big Hollywood (h/t Bookworm)
- WANDA SYKES HOPES RUSH LIMBAUGH’S KIDNEYS FAIL
- PEOPLE: ‘ASHLEY JUDD TARGETS SARAH PALIN FOR SPORT HUNTING’
- ‘BOONDOCKS’ CREATOR MCGRUDER CALLS CONDI RICE, COLIN POWELL MURDERERS
- EBERT’S SITE PRAISES LEFT-WING BUSH ASSASSINATION FILM
- KATHY GRIFFIN SAYS 2011 IS 16-YEAR-OLD WILLOW PALIN’S ‘YEAR TO GO DOWN’
- JOY BEHAR WANTS THAT ‘BITCH’ SHARRON ANGLE TO GO ‘TO HELL’
- AARON SORKIN HAPPY WHEN HUNTERS SHOOT EACH OTHER
- PLAYBOY MAGAZINE’S HATE-F**K LIST OF CONSERVATIVE WOMEN
- MONTEL WILLIAMS URGES MICHELE BACHMANN TO KILL HERSELF
- PEREZ HILTON CALLS MISS CALIFORNIA A ‘C*NT’
- SEAN PENN CALLS REAGAN’S ALZHEIMER’S ‘JUSTICE’
- ROSIE O’DONNELL CALLS BUSH ‘WAR CRIMINAL’ WHO MUST ‘BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE’
- ARIANNA HUFFINGTON FILMS ROLE IN BUSH ASSASSINATION FANTASY-FILM
- ALEC BALDWIN THREATENS TO STONE HENRY HYDE, KILL CHILDREN
- JEFF WELLS PRAISES METAPHOR OF ‘HOBO’ FILM BLASTING WEALTHY WITH SHOTGUN
No, they don’t want it toned down. They want to score political points, period. But as Bookworm and Ann Althouse notes, this ain’t 1995 anymore when it was much more difficult to look up where the rhetoric was coming from.
They are a bunch of hypocritical weasels.
And this rush to judgment reveals the media’s not-so-secret biases toward certain political personalities and movements. Among a few prominent leftist columnists, celebrities and talking heads, their responses barely concealed a morbid glee in getting their assumptions met – using incendiary rhetoric that they themselves pretend to condemn. The shooting was the best thing that ever happened to their own reservoir of anger. It was a leftwing Lalapalooza.
Actually, it was like watching an opening at Walmart, with sweaty hacks in a tug of war over a table of identical, knee jerk assumptions. All designed to control the narrative. To get there first, to fill a void. It was the world’s worst cocktail party, without the cocktails – featuring Jane Fonda, KooKoo Krugman, Piers Morgan, the puppets at Daily Kos and Media Matters – and even WaPo columnist Courtland Milloy, who wanted “to spit on” the tea party, now blaming the right for the shootings. Capping it off, we have a Democrat who wants to ban symbols that may seem threatening to elected officials. I believe that’s symptom one in the diagnosis, “God, You’re Stupid.”
Michelle Malkin runs down the hypocrites point by point:
I. PALIN HATE
II. BUSH HATE
III. MISC. TEA PARTY/GOP/ANTI-TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE HATE
IV. ANTI-CONSERVATIVE FEMALE HATE
V. LEFT-WING MOB HATE — campus, anti-war radicals, ACORN, eco-extremists, & unions
VI. OPEN-BORDERS HATE
VII. ANTI-MILITARY HATE
VIII. HATE: CRIMES — the ever-growing Unhinged Mugshot Collection
Visit and feel the hate….the pure unadulterated hate emanating from the liberals. And they try to tell US to tone it down!
Hell, the Sheriff whose job it was to protect those who were murdered jumped into the fray to score political points.
Hypocritical weasels one and all.
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