Signal-boosting.

[nenena]

Because this is too important to let it get buried:

First, in case you haven't seen the news yet today, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head at a "Congress in Your Corner" meeting today, and 12 other people in the crowd were shot as well. As of this writing Giffords is out of surgery and showing promising signs of responsiveness, but two six of the other shooting victims - a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl - have died.

The shooter has been arrested, but there's a bigger picture to be seen here than just the tale of one man with a gun.

Because of Sarah Palin's "Take Back the 20" list, which she is now desperately trying to delete off the internet. Unfortunately screencaps cannot lie.

For the record, this was Sarah Palin's campaign to target twenty congressional districts that were key for the Republicans to win back from the Democrats in order to secure control of the Congress, which normally wouldn't be an inherently malevolent thing - after all, there's nothing wrong with strategic campaigning - except for the fact Palin posted a map of the United States showing crosshairs on top of the targeted districts and actually sponsored an anti-Giffords rally that was widely advertised with the following text: "Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly."

In case you still don't believe that rhetoric like this has power, Giffords gave an interview back in March in which she discussed how she began receiving death threats, harassment, and vandalism right after Palin began the "Take Back the 20" campaign.

I don't believe for a second that Sarah Palin actually wanted to encourage anybody to shoot Gabrielle Giffords, but I do believe that Sarah Palin is a stupid lady who deliberately appeals to a demographic with a well-documented history of anti-government violence and who doesn't understand what the consequences of her rhetoric would be. EVEN IF you believe that "Take Back the 20" played no role in the shooter's motivation, that STILL doesn't change the fact that Palin's rhetoric was completely vile and totally out of line, even by US political standards (which is saying a lot!). Anybody not as famous as Palin would have been arrested for making terroristic threats if they put up that website and advertised an anti-Whoever rally that featured a firing of an automatic weapon as a symbolic gesture. Or, in other words, this comment thread.

Palin is trying to delete all evidence of her campaign, which at least tells us that she's smart enough to understand that she could very well deserve blame for her role in encouraging this vile act. Don't let the evidence be buried and don't let Palin get away with not owning up to her own rhetoric. The silver lining that could come from this tragedy is more people saying NO to violent and inappropriate campaign rhetoric, now that we've seen its consequences. That won't happen if Palin succeeds in burying the evidence and denying that her repulsive campaign ever existed in the first place.

ETA: Palin is now deleting old tweets, too.

ETA 2: Holy fucking shit. Palin's supporters are now commenting on her Facebook page and congratulating her for "getting rid of" Giffords. If anybody still has doubts that Palin's rhetoric was irresponsible, or that her campaign encouraged the shooter, this ought to remove that doubt. Congratulations, Sarah Palin, because your supporters include this guy who writes: "Go, Sarah! Gifford deserved to die. She was a liberal, a Jew, a health care reformer, an enemy of the NRA, pro abortion and pro gay... One down and 16 to go."

How did Palin not understand that PEOPLE LIKE THIS were her supporters. How.

ETA 3: Quoting this comment from elobelia, because it hits so many nails right on the head: "If a student at my brother's school posted an image on facebook with crosshairs over fellow students' faces while in other posts talking about solving their problems with these people with a gun, he/she would be arrested and expelled from school. It's funny that people aren't willing to hold Sarah Palin to the same standard they would hold a 15 year old kid. If I had posted those things on Twitter, you can bet the cops would have been swarming my house today to see if there was a connection between me and the shooting - as well they should have. I'm not saying Palin should be arrested, I'm saying we shouldn't put up with this bullshit from her." Yes, yes. THIS. (Actually I kind of doubt the latter part about the cops swarming somebody's house because of what they posted on Twitter, but the first part about the hypothetical 15-year-old kid? Absolutely true. I'm a teacher and I've seen kids actually arrested for saying even mildly threatening things on the internet before.)

ETA 4: From here: "Law enforcement officials said members of Congress reported 42 cases of threats or violence in the first three months of 2010, nearly three times the 15 cases reported during the same period a year earlier. Nearly all dealt with the health care bill, and Giffords was among the targets." Palin's "Take Back the 20" list specifically targeted congress members who voted in support of the health care bill. Tea Party rhetoric specifically targeted congress members who voted in support of the health care bill. And violence against these congress members drastically increased at the same time. Gee, you think there might be a connection?!

ETA 5: Sherriff Clarence Dupnik is a hero. It takes a lot of courage to be in the midst of all of that and still directly call out violent anti-government rhetoric as being one of the causes of the shooting, something which most of the major network news coverage of the shooting is still tip-toeing around or blatantly denying. It takes incredible courage to actually use the words "bigotry" and "prejudice" to describe the hateful rhetoric being stirred in Arizona, because although both of those words are 100% accurate descriptors, most reporters and commentators are still too cowardly to actually use them. Kudos to Dupnik for having the courage and honesty to call a spade a spade. Finally, it shows a great deal of sensitivity and intelligence to speak about Loughner's mental health the way that Dupnik did: YES Loughner is clearly mentally ill but NO that in no way shape or form absolves Palin, Kelly, and their ilk from being culpable for what happened. It is BECAUSE people with a combination of certain mental illnesses and prejudiced beliefs are suspectible to violent rhetoric that violent rhetoric is irresponsible for politicians to spew in the first place.

Comments

[nenena.livejournal.com]

http://www.aolnews.com/2010/10/11/joe-manchin-guns-down-cap-and-trade-bill-in-new-campaign-ad/

An ad from October 2010. A Republican governor.

How is this NOT a part of the current political climate again?

I guess I should have used smaller words when I made my request, but I was asking you to support your point that the current political climate/rhetoric being spewed around right now is the exact same as it has always been.

Also, for the rest of your comment, let me repeat my response in bold again:

The fact that Loughner had mental health problems is absolutely not up for debate.

I don't know why you just wasted an entire paragraph trying to "prove" to me that Loughner had mental health problems. Duh. What I accused you of - and you just gloriously proved it again - is that you're incapable of talking about Loughner without using ridiculously wrong terminology, relying on incorrect stereotypes about people with mental illnesses in order to argue your point, and flashing your bigoted, ablist prejudices all over your post.

I just gave up evidence of the other side doing the same things to try and stop the nonsensical double standard you are bringing forth.

You seem completely incapable of grasping the idea that somebody could argue that Palin's rhetoric was vile, that Democrats use vile rhetoric too, that Loughner was mentally ill and that this was obviously a reason why he resorted to violence, and that none of the above changes the fact that Palin's rhetoric was still vile.

You showed up here because you saw people criticizing Sarah Palin and you knee-jerk assumed that we would all be TOTOTALLY PROVEN WRONG if you just linked us to a bunch of stuff like the assholes at Daily Kos being assholes. As if none of us here have ever criticized Daily Kos and that ilk for exactly the same thing that we are criticizing Palin for right now. Because apparently you assume that anybody criticizing Sarah Palin MUST be a party-line towing Democrat, right? The fact that you even started this debate with that assumption does not speak well for your intelligence, and the comments that you have continued to leave in reply only further served to show your ass.

The only double standard here is the one by which your average citizen would end up in deep shit if he or she posted messages to Facebook and Twitter that had any of the same language that Palin used. Deep shit as in possibly being investigated and arrested. The issue here is that Palin got away with saying and doing things that other people would have been arrested for and there's no room for that sort of shit in American politics. THIS issue has nothing whatsoever to do with Jared Loughner. People have been criticizing Palin for her rhetoric since the Take Back the 20 map was published last year. The only reason that the outcry against Palin has reached critical mass right now is because of her desperate attempt to cover up what she said and did.

[(Anonymous)]

"An ad from October 2010. A Republican governor."

Wow. Joe Manchin is actually a Democrat.

"I guess I should have used smaller words when I made my request, but I was asking you to support your point that the current political climate/rhetoric being spewed around right now is the exact same as it has always been."

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/27/us/mondale-and-hart-with-smiles-say-only-target-now-is-reagan.html?scp=3&sq=&st=nyt

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/05/us/if-bush-offers-good-target-democrats-aim-is-shaky.html?scp=7&sq=&st=nyt

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/24/us/2002-campaign-democrats-mcauliffe-describes-jeb-bush-democrats-top-target.html?scp=5&sq=&st=nyt

I could go on forever with protest signs though. But, hey, all those times were perfectly politically stable with no bad rhetoric at all from either side.

Not only that, of course, the links I provided to the older articles show nicely that, well, gun/aiming/targeting metaphors were also used there.

http://up-ship.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/demmap.jpeg
Again I bring you this map. Which is, you know, 2004. Before the Tea Party. Before Sarah Palin. Before the current political climate that we know it as.

If anything, this is tamer than any other time period in recent history.

From the Rodney King riots.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1614117_1614084_1614831,00.html

The Vietnam War
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/17/newsid_2818000/2818967.stm

Civil Rights
http://timelines.com/1963/5/3/violence-erupts-as-civil-rights-protesters-clash-with-police-in-birmingham-al

World War I
http://www.bookrags.com/research/civil-liberties-world-war-i-aaw-03/

Political unrest is ageless. You can not blame one thing. Especially any one metaphor. As metaphors do not kill people. People kill people.

http://www.rightspeak.net/2011/01/peyton-manning-in-crosshairs.html
Watch out Peyton.

"I don't know why you just wasted an entire paragraph trying to "prove" to me that Loughner had mental health problems. Duh. What I accused you of - and you just gloriously proved it again - is that you're incapable of talking about Loughner without using ridiculously wrong terminology..."

Oh please.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/paranoid-schizophrenia/DS00862/DSECTION=symptoms

All of the examples I listed? They can all fit REALLY nicely into those symptoms given, can't they? So, really, what stereotypes were used again? Everything that can fit into the symptoms given for the mental illness?

"You showed up here because you saw people criticizing Sarah Palin and you knee-jerk assumed that we would all be TOTOTALLY PROVEN WRONG if you just linked us to a bunch of stuff..."

Hey, I came in here because everyone was flinging around the blame game when it was completely unwarranted. A little quick research and insight shows that all these accusations are being completely taken without looking at the finer points of the problem. Since you failed to list any other links except Sarah Palin related examples, it is only fair to show that both sides are capable of the same issues and that it is unfair to just blame one group of people without bringing up the other side. Which matters not since neither side is the real problem here at all.

"The only double standard here is the one by which your average citizen would end up in deep shit if he or she posted messages to Facebook and Twitter that had any of the same language that Palin used. Deep shit as in possibly being investigated and arrested..."

Now I know that you know this isn't true. Again, how many death threats do public officials/media personnel/anyone famous get again? Hundreds to thousands? Remember that link I showed to the Tweets of Sarah Palin asked to be killed?

Not only that, Sarah Palin did not specifically target any person with harm or anything else. You can draw your own conclusions from whatever you want, but the facts are the facts. Sarah Palin never explicitly threatened Congresswoman Gifford's and would not be arrested for a terroristic threat as it doesn't actually incite violence on anyone. Intent is important in those rulings you know.

[nenena.livejournal.com]

Wow. Joe Manchin is actually a Democrat.

Then I stand corrected. And he sucks.

And wow, proving that violent rhetoric was used during the Vietnam War, during the Civil Rights era, during WWI, and during the Rodney King riots is really not helping your point. You're still missing the point spectacularly.

You can link me to as much shitty, vile rhetoric from Democrats (or other Republicans or whoever) as you want. It doesn't change a single thing about the fact that what Sarah Palin did was wrong. As far as I'm concerned, President Obama could whip out an AK-47 at a press conference tomorrow and threaten to blow Bill O'Reilly's head off and it still wouldn't change the fact that what Sarah Palin did was wrong. It would make Obama vile, too. But Sarah Palin would still be vile. And she would still deserve every word of criticism that she's ever gotten for her TbtT campaign, whether that criticism came before for after Giffords' shooting.

You cannot disprove that Sarah Palin's campaign was unacceptable by trying to show me that other people suck as much or worse. That doesn't change anything about what Palin did or said.

And as for the arrests....

Now I know that you know this isn't true.

Except that I've seen it happen. To students at the schools where I've worked. I mentioned that in my post. Other people in the comments here have shared similar stories. But I'm not surprised that you didn't bother to read any of that.

You can point out that hundreds or even thousands of people get away with making threats on the internet without reprecussions every day, but that is largely because they are able to do so anonymously, or because nobody reports them when they do. When law enforcement officials have a name to attach to a threatening statement, however, you better believe that people get in trouble for it. There's a former student from the first school where I taught who was arrested and charged because he posted a picture of a classmate with a crosshairs target on her face on his MySpace.

Don't try to tell me that it doesn't happen. What the hell do you know? You clearly live in your basement and have only the vaguest idea of how the real world works anyway. Or at least you don't seem to be have any real world experience except for things that you read about on the internet.

Why are you wasting your time embarrassing yourself here again?

Edit: Oh yeah, forgot to add. You asked me to point out what offensive stereotypes you used in your comments. I already did three comments up, but once again: AMERICAN. FLAG. The fact that you're still arguing that Loughner burning an American Flag on video is evidence that he's a deranged killer - and that you even opened up your very first comment on the matter with that bit of "evidence" as if it were clearly the most convincing proof that you needed to present! - is all the proof that *I* need to know that you aren't even intelligent enough to hold your own in a conversation about mental health.

Also, further proof to me that you never really do get out of your basement, do you?

But please, do spend another two hours furiously researching links on the internet so that you can comment with another 1000-word comment in order to completely fail at actually addressing any of the points in my original post again. Please. Because I'm totally not sick of engaging a trolling idiot in a pointless argument at all.

Shut up. Go back to whatever corner of the internet you crawled out of so that you can keep fapping to Sarah Palin's pictures and salivating about the idea of BRAVELY VANQUISHING HER ENEMIES ON THE INTERNET with your totally-divorced-from-reality arguments, inability to read, and stunning ability to waste your time dregging up links on the interbutts in order to fail to prove your own points.

[(Anonymous)]

"Edit: Oh yeah, forgot to add. You asked me to point out what offensive stereotypes you used in your comments. I already did three comments up, but once again: AMERICAN. FLAG. The fact that you're still arguing that Loughner burning an American Flag on video is evidence that he's a deranged killer - and that you even opened up your very first comment on the matter with that bit of "evidence" as if it were clearly the most convincing proof that you needed to present! - is all the proof that *I* need to know that you aren't even intelligent enough to hold your own in a conversation about mental health."

Again, how many times do I have to point out that it is less the action and more of HOW he did the action, his reasons given for said action, and his thought process for doing said action?

"But please, do spend another two hours furiously researching links on the internet so that you can comment with another 1000-word comment in order to completely fail at actually addressing any of the points in my original post again. Please. Because I'm totally not sick of engaging a trolling idiot in a pointless argument at all."

Wow. Really now? My responses are not really going to change anything at this point are they? But, hey, you can claim what you will about me failing to defend my own points, but really, it is you that fell into that trap, and it is sad, really. The original posts at least had some thought put into them. Now it is just a round-about that is going no where and getting more and more insulting, with less and less evidence, and with you responding to less and less of my points. Also, I don't have to defend Sarah Palin since, really, she doesn't need my help for that. My intent was to bring a different perspective to this over politicizing of a tragedy only to spew more hatred against people they don't agree with, without the real facts to what really resulted in the heinous attacks on innocent people. I feel I did enough to address the original issue that political rhetoric on either side had nothing to do with the Tucson shooting and that Sarah Palin is being unfairly labeled in this instance. All the evidence in the world probably won't change your view anyway. I will now stop taking up your time.

[nenena.livejournal.com]

I feel I did enough to address the original issue that political rhetoric on either side had nothing to do with the Tucson shooting

Which I also stated in my original post, and agreed with you repeatedly on, while you still insisted on wasting thousands of words to repeatedly argue that point. A waste of time you were in this thread indeed.

Sarah Palin is being unfairly labeled in this instance.

And no amount of evidence that I or anybody else provided in the original post or in the comments here is ever going to dissuade you from that view, is it?

I will now stop taking up your time.

Thank fucking God.