…so don’t blame them.
I do not read the Huffington Post, but I was asked by a close friend to read this and then tell her what I thought.
Do not bother to read it, I will summarize: The missing element in the dialog about why Jared Loughner shot a congresswoman is that nobody is blaming it on his misogyny. Also, guns are bad and men are violent.
To give you a flavor of how truly bad this is, I give you a few selected bits (Yes, I have suffered on your behalf.) Keep in mind that this was written a full 9 days after the shootings:
…mental illness itself has critical gendered dynamics…
While it is obviously necessary to resist drawing premature conclusions based on a still-incomplete picture…
One only hopes that among the many Americans [Sheriff] Dupnik has inspired by his fearless calling out of right-wing bullies will be many more middle-aged and older white men…
Is it possible that if the congressperson in his district had been a man, Loughner would still have shot him? From what we know today, it’s impossible to say.
You are probably laughing already, but this howler takes the prize:
When the shooter is identified as mentally ill, much of the serious sociological or political dialogue shuts down. In this case the right has an obvious self-interest in depoliticizing the killings, attributing them to the crazed acts of a deranged lunatic, and accusing progressives of opportunistically using the tragedy as a stick with which to beat conservatives.
Why, one might wonder, is the “right’s” collective “self”-interest more obvious than say, deranged people’s self-interest? Is it not even more obvious that everyone has an interest in depoliticizing the killings? The identification of any particular group in this context presumes that group is responsible, why else is their self-interest notable compared to anyone and everyone’s self-interest?
Once accused, however, defending yourself is a further sign of culpability. The reason the “right” accused progressives of opportunistically politicizing the tragedy is because that is exactly what happened. Pointing this out is unfair and incivil.
Lost in the myriad discussions of the left's propaganda barrage and the even more numerous discussions of the shooting itself is individual responsibility.Both the irresponsible left and what's left of the responsible left have a genetic disposition to see everything in terms of groups. No group shot the Tuscon victims. A single individual, acting for his own unknown reasons, did so.Even Lee Harvey Oswald, a known Communist, was assigned more responsibility for his actions.
Exactly. The progressives' hive-mind IS capable of self-interest and they can't imagine individual minds.