Incomprehensible but nonetheless alarming spambot:
Hello there, I found your blog by way of Google even though looking for 1st assist to get a heart attack along with your post looks very interesting for me.
Can the Republicans hold onto Congess?
Jay Cost has an excellent piece on the subject in this week’s Weekly Standard.
Why has the left’s mask slipped recently?
In the wake of the Tucson shooting, commenter Occam’s Beard made these remarks:
The question is why they’re letting the mask slip now, instead of doing the Walter Cronkite and continuing to hide their true views. Perhaps [they] are doing so because they think they’re on the verge of winning, and are overplaying their hand, Luxemburg/Liebknecht style. Or perhaps they are doing so because they see their historic chance slipping away, thanks to their assorted betes noire (sp?) ”“ Limbaugh, Beck, Fox News, and most especially, Palin ”“ publicly disputing what leftists try to portray as received wisdom, undaunted by the vituperation of the left, and striking a resonant chord with many people.
Good question: why now? I think it’s that, with the 2008 election of Obama and the heavily Democratic composition of both House and Senate, they thought they had it made. They truly believed that they had defeated the conservative monster forever and could do a permanent victory dance in the end zone.
It turned out to be otherwise, and rather quickly at that. And on some deep and perhaps still-unacknowledged level, they know it’s they themselves who blew the golden opportunity, by trying to go too far too fast.
If only they had been more careful and more incremental, they could have had it all. But somewhere between the election of 2008 and that of 2010—probably around the time of the long hard drive to ram through HCR—the mask slipped as to their intentions, and now they don’t care if it slips a bit more if it can get ultimately them where they want to go, and where they fully thought they should have succeeded in going by this time.
After all, demonizing their opponents through the use of Orwellian accusations worked in the past, didn’t it? It can work again, right? The Two Minutes Hate has a venerable function, doesn’t it?
But they may be underestimating the intelligence of the American people once again (at least, I think and hope they are). Fifty-seven percent of Americans polled are not buying the idea that political rhetoric had anything to do with the Tucson shootings. As Democrats lose more and more Americans, they become more and more frantic to win them back.
Last night the president avoided this trap. It is no accident; he reads the polls, too. He knew what he had to do, and he did it. But notice that he waited from Saturday till Wednesday evening to make his statement, allowing the vicious dogs to bark all that time and to deeply plant the accusations that have increased the ire on all the left-wing blogs and discussion boards.
The Anchoress Elizabeth Scalia, insightful as always, has an explanation for the particular form the left’s post-Tucson accusations have taken. She believes the left is desperately racing to its end-game of “putting into place…their long-desired restrictions on speech, gun-control measures…[and] the so-called ‘Fairness Doctrine.'”
In their minds, a massacre such as the one on Saturday in Tucson represented a golden opportunity to promote those goals. But in order to do so, the link between the right and the shooting needed to be made. Jared Loughner didn’t oblige by being an actual Tea Party member, as they’d originally hoped. Nor was he even sympathetic to the right—or, as it turns out, especially politically interested at all. That did not stop them, but it made the strategic and amoral nature of their charges more transparent. Let’s hope the American people remember this lesson in 2012.
[ADDENDUM: Jennifer Rubin thinks that one of the big mistakes the left made was jumping the gun, as it were, and making their accusations before they knew the facts about Loughner, which proved them wrong and made them look foolish.
I agree that’s the way it turned out for the majority of people. But I don’t think the left’s early response was an oversight at all. I think it was a gamble, one they thought worth taking. They were hoping facts would prove them right, and thinking they might. They also didn’t want the facts to get in the way of a good argument. That required an early response, and would fire up the base, always a good thing. They just didn’t count on most people in the country paying enough attention to discredit them.]
Give Jonathan Martin the Spin of the Week award: again with the all-about-Palin
In Politico, Martin makes Obama’s speech all about Palin.
I kid you not. It goes like this: why couldn’t Palin have given such a fine and healing speech on the subject? Obama did. She just can’t rise about it.
I guess I missed the part where the MSM and a huge bunch of Republican pundits had accused the president of motivating the killer through his inflammatory rhetoric. I missed the part where he had to defend himself against—yes, a blood libel mounted by an opposition that wasted hardly a moment for the bodies to get cold before making the charge.
Martin writes:
At sunrise in the East on Wednesday, Sarah Palin demonstrated that she has little interest ”” or capacity ”” in moving beyond her brand of grievance-based politics. And at sundown in the West, Barack Obama reminded even his critics of his ability to rally disparate Americans around a message of reconciliation.
As of this moment there are over 1700 comments to Martin’s post, and counting. The first one has a slightly different tone than what I’ve written here, but I kinda like it:
Wow. Martin is spewing some world class sycophantic BS today!
Obama’s Tucson speech pitch-perfect
I neither watched it nor listened to it, but I read the full text of Obama’s speech, and it seems that the orator who was heard at the 2004 Democratic Convention has returned.
We always knew that this Obama existed, along with this sort of speechwriter. Obama has decided to go back to being the great peacemaker, with a minister’s message of love and togetherness.
It used to be easier to believe in this Obama, before we saw his behavior as president and heard his unscripted rhetoric. I expected to hear him use this peaceful and healing tone tonight in his speech, if only for strategic reasons. It’s impossible to know what’s in the man’s mind, but his past does not make me optimistic.
But wouldn’t it be wonderful if he—and everyone in Congress, and Obama’s successor, whomever he or she might be—could fulfill the wish he gave voice to tonight, speaking of Christina Taylor Green:
I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it. All of us ”“ we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations.
I’ll leave it at that.
Another hero: Dorwin Stoddard, killed in Tucson
David Nelson RIP
It’s not just that David Nelson has died. It’s that he was the last surviving member of the original TV family foursome, his brother Ricky having died twenty-five years ago.
And that David was already 74. The Fifties are now officially ancient history.
Sarah Palin and the blood libel
It’s all over the blogosphere. Look at memeorandum’s top articles, and you’ll see they’re all about Sarah Palin’s video defense of herself in which she calls the attacks blaming her for the Giffords shootings a “blood libel.”
Even some on the right consider her choice of words unfortunate. Jonah Goldberg suggests that her use of the phrase in this context “is not ideal.” After all, it’s historically been employed as an anti-Semitic accusation against Jews, alleging that they murder Christian children in order to employ their blood in rituals. The goal of the blood libel is to incite pogroms and reprisals against Jews.
And at Harry’s Place the question of whether Palin even understands the term has been raised.
But what phrase would have been better? I actually can’t think of one. Yes, “blood libel” is not exactly correct. No one is accusing Palin of being a Jew who has killed a child to use its blood in making matzos. But, as I pointed out in my recent piece for PJ, most normal people understand figures of speech, and Palin is using an analogy here that is actually rather apt.
Sarah Palin is known for many things. One of them is that she doesn’t pull her rhetorical punches. We saw that in particular when she trotted out the phrase “death panels” to describe the direction in which she thought HCR was inevitably headed.
I believe that, like her or hate her (and I’ve gone on record saying I don’t think she’s a good candidate for the 2012 presidency), Palin chooses her phrases carefully and knows what she’s doing. And I would guess that, as a religious Christian and strong supporter of Israels and Jews, Palin knows exactly what the blood libel is and has an awareness of the history behind the use of the phrase.
I am wondering how it would feel to be reeling from hearing the dreadful news of the Tucson assassination/massacre, and then almost immediately to find oneself accused of inciting it by press and an opposition solemnly and sanctimoniously intoning the charge in transparently hypocritical hope of elevating the tone of political discourse while simultaneously pointing the finger of bloody guilt at their hated opponent. You know, the phrase “blood libel” might just come to mind.
What the left has done to Sarah Palin has been disgusting right from the start. But the accusation that she is responsible for the Tucson killings might just be a new low. So let’s see how the term “blood libel” might apply:
(1) The charge stems from irrational and long-term hatred of Palin for what and who she is.
(2) They are saying she is an accessory before the fact to an assassination attempt and several cold-blooded murders, including that of a child.
(3) The goal of the charge is to provoke a hateful backlash against her.
(4) It is part of a long-term pattern of stirring up irrational hatred towards Palin.
Fearless though Palin appears to be, it’s actually possible that, when she heard of the Giffords shooting, the thought passed through her mind that she’s similarly at risk from crazies stirred up by the hatred directed towards her from the other side.
Would I have used the term “blood libel?” Probably not. But I’m not Sarah Palin. I haven’t been the target of the most vicious campaign against a politician in modern memory. Within hours, death threats against Palin began to pop up on Twitter. I think Sarah Palin’s earned the right to use the term “blood libel” to describe what’s going on:
[NOTE: Instapundit’s Glenn Reynold used the term first to describe what’s been happening to Palin in the wake of the Giffords shooting, and he got only a little bit of flak for it.
(Am I still allowed to say “flak?”)
Here Reynolds points out previous political uses of the term “blood libel.” But they didn’t elicit a peep of protest because, as he also points out, the speaker wasn’t Sarah Palin.]
[ADDENDUM: Support for Sarah from a surprising source. Good for him.
[ADDENDUM II: Ace has more. (Hat tip: commenter “rickl.”) Some of the comments at Ace’s are pretty clever, too, like this one:
Did you know Palin wrote her speech in Tucsonese blood? True story.
Well, that’s actually not true… but she wanted to. Prove she didn’t!]
[ADDENDUM III: The Anchoress is spot on in her assessment.]
[ADDENDUM IV: This piece by Dr. Sanity is a few days old, but still relevant and well worth reading.]
“I just kept running into it…”
Running into it, not away from it.
Also, “Everybody has a mother who’s going to cry tonight.”
[NOTE: In line with Zamudio’s prediction about crying mothers, a neighbor of Loughton’s parents is quoted as saying that “Jared Loughner’s mother has been in bed, crying nonstop since Saturday…” Not surprising.]
The Giffords shooting and mere words
I’ve got a new article up at PJ entitled, “Politics and the schizophrenic’s language: do mere words have the power to ignite acts such as Saturday’s shooting?”
Comment here, comment there, comment wherever you wish.
So, why did no one report Loughner to the Arizona mental health system?
Sometimes when murders happen, the neighbors and people in the community who knew the perpetrator beforehand say he’d just been a quiet, nondescript person who’d always minded his own business.
Not so Jared Loughner. He was telegraphing signs of distress, disturbingly chaotic thinking, and menace to all and sundry. A great many people who knew him—or had encountered him, if only briefly—before he let loose on Saturday and became a mass murderer, have said they were not at all surprised when the killer’s identity was revealed to be Jared.
So why did his behavior not capture the attention of the mental health authorities in Arizona prior to the killings? After all, it’s not as though that would have been difficult to do; Arizona is a state with laws that encourage and facilitate such reporting for the purposes of involuntary evaluation and possible commitment:
Any person, including any of the students in Loughner’s classes who exchanged worried emails about his strange actions or any of his teachers who sought to have him removed or who wanted him to receive treatment, could have petitioned the court to have him evaluated for mental illness.
Unlike other states, which require that someone be an imminent danger to themselves or others before seeking to have them involuntarily committed for psychiatric evaluation and treatment, in Arizona, one need only be “persistently or acutely” ill.
I’m wondering whether it’s commonly known among the citizens of Arizona that they have this right. I’m wondering whether those who encountered Loughner’s disturbing behavior thought someone else might report him instead, or already had. I’m wondering whether they were afraid that, if they reported him, he’d find out and come to take revenge on them. I’m wondering what his parents thought was going on, how much they noticed, and what they tried.
[ADDENDUM: Dr. Helen has more to say, including offering the following quotes from the journals of fellow students of Loughner’s. This was no ordinary case of a slightly wacky student, as you will see:
From June 10:
“As for me, Thursday means the end to week two of algebra class. It seems to be going by quickly, but then I do have three weeks to go so we’ll see how I feel by then. Class isn’t dull as we have a seriously disturbed student in the class, and they are trying to figure out how to get rid of him before he does something bad, but on the other hand, until he does something bad, you can’t do anything about him. Needless to say, I sit by the door.”From June 14:
“We have a mentally unstable person in the class that scares the living crap out of me. He is one of those whose picture you see on the news, after he has come into class with an automatic weapon. Everyone interviewed would say, Yeah, he was in my math class and he was really weird. I sit by the door with my purse handy. If you see it on the news one night, know that I got out fast…”
Loughner was escorted out of school by police and asked not to return because of his behavior.]
[ADDENDUM II: As far as the parents go, they are “devastated and guilt-ridden,” according to a neighbor.]
Spambot of the day
Query for this spambot: ah, but can fun actually ever be captured and possessed? Does it not evaporate at the slightest effort to cage it?
Took me awhile to learn all the comments, but make enjoyed the article. It turned out to be very useful to me and most probably to all the commenters listed here! It’s always nice when its possible to not only be advised, but also engaged! I’m sure you possessed fun writing this article.
Spambot, for further useful and engagingly learnable commentary, I refer you to Willam Blake’s “Eternity:”
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise.