I don't really think this deserves its own thread, given the low level of activity on General Discussion in past months, but I couldn't find a suitable existing thread to put it in. It is a copy of my recent conclusions on the Loughner shootings in Arizona. I have slightly edited it from the original form.
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A week later, I have some conclusive thoughts on the shootings in Arizona. Developments in the news have borne out what I expected. This was not simply murder, but terrorism—a premeditated assassination attempt that claimed the lives of numerous victims. The terrorist is a right-winger, a conservative farther to the right even than the Tea Party fringe. He is also mentally ill, and apparently got worse over the years. With treatment, perhaps even he will not understand why he did what he did. There may not be a “why”; even though his action was premeditated, it may have been truly insane.
I see two elements to this story worth talking about, not counting the
considerable good luck and medical professionalism that prevented several more fatalities, and (contrary to early news reports which I incorrectly repeated here) probably ended up saving the life—although perhaps not the lifestyle or career—of Representative Gabrielle Giffords. The first of these is the issue of mental healthcare in this country, and the second is right-wing extremism.
I've had several mentally ill friends over the years. I have mentally ill family members. I have met numerous mentally ill people. Below the degree of outright illness, I have known a greater number of people who deal with, or used to deal with, mental disturbances that affect their quality of life, both material and ideal. Below that, almost everybody has troubling mental issues of one kind or another, now and then, or oftener; a part and parcel of being human.
We, as a society, stigmatize mental issues in this country. We use more deeply associative verbiage—“be” rather than “have”—to characterize mentally distressed people, and we pass judgment on their character more readily and more negatively than we do in the case of non-mental health issues. We are uncomfortable around both mentally distressed people and subjects of conversation regarding the same. We ignore, neglect, and deny. We also distract and divert, partly in the form of glamorizing popular depictions of mental issues that have almost no connection with the realities. That romanticized vision has become interwoven with the popular morality of our day.
In short we have immunized ourselves against the concept of mental illness, which is preposterous given that we have done so little to protect ourselves against the reality of it.
The implications for our society are far-reaching, even revolutionary. It's not simply that we don't have a robust enough mental healthcare system—although we certainly don't. It's that our society turns out mentally sick people, and then leaves them mostly to fend for themselves. It's better, in a way, than it was in the past, when effective medicine was less advanced, and when the peasantry was correspondingly larger than today and thus the material suffering of most sick people was much greater. But by most other measures, we're doing it all wrong. We're raising children to be predisposed to mental issues, we're ignoring the problem and thereby preventing ourselves from staging a social confrontation against the scourge, and we're drastically underfunding the mental healthcare apparatus.
People should be raised to recognize troubling thoughts and behavior in themselves and others, and to report that to psychologists. Psychologists should be able to investigate the possibility until they can make a satisfactory determination. If the individual in question is found to be mentally unwell, they should have access to the full services of the medical community, as needed and within reason, to achieve a satisfactory recovery, or else the best sustained satisfactory treatment, or else a legitimate suicide. In the classroom and in the workplace, authorities should provide accommodations, again within reason, to promote the individual's wellbeing, or at least to not actively antagonize. If they're not able to sustain themselves, then society needs to pay for them to have a decent material quality of life. And this should all be so thoroughly integrated in our society that it is unremarkable.
And that's just the treatment. For prevention, we would have to completely change the way society works. We would have to teach people how to communicate, honestly and pertinently. We would have to disestablish cultural norms and social institutions which trap people in high-stress or low-expression situations. We would have to make progress on social injustice, drug abuse, and class warfare. We would have to discourage religious fundamentalism. We would have to discourage attention deficiencies and overstimulation in our mass media. It goes on and on, just how much we would have to do, just to prevent a substantial majority of nurture's contributions to mental health problems.
As things stand now, my prescriptions are so implausible as to be useless. The best I can hope for within the present system is better education of mental issues, more social acceptance, and more public funding. Even that pathetic wishlist is improbable to the point of being impractical.
People like Jared Loughner, who have a sustained chronic illness and no ability to seek out or accept the informal social support of friends, family, and colleagues, will likely become progressively more destructive until they end up dead, homeless, or in prison. Right now I can quickly think of half a dozen people I have known for whom such a fate seems distinctly possible. Sometimes it isn't even a question of ability to afford paying for healthcare, or of having enough friends, but of whether the individual has the
institutional support necessary to persuade them to seek out help even if they don't want to do so or don't understand that they need to do so. Sometimes that's what it takes; sometimes money isn't enough and friends aren't enough. Sometimes it takes a social welfare net.
Today, the system is geared toward medicating mentally ill people into a state of docility. Normalcy on top of that is merely a welcome plus. There aren't enough psychologists available, nor enough largesse on the part of health insurers to allow people to see psychologists, for things to be any other way, and the state of mental drugs is still young and relatively crude.
I suppose it's worth pondering the point at which individual self-control ought to be superseded by the state. I'm in favor of rather exuberant commitment policies for short-term interventions, and comparatively reluctant policies for long-term commitment. Self-control is a key measure of ideal quality of life. I think it can be legitimately interrupted for a short while in certain cases of existential importance—as serious mental illness always is—but it must not be withheld from the arc of a person's life. Better, perhaps, to let people who are that far gone destroy themselves in a fashion that is not harmful to others, or else humanely euthanize them. When it comes to the penalization of mentally ill criminals who committed crimes in large part because of their mental illness, do not be distracted by the crime from noticing that their quality of life was often miserable before any illegalities occurred.
What I really want to talk about, though, especially given my tentative comments a week ago, is the question of the right-wing hate speech.
I should mention that I watched some of his Internet videos. They generally fall into two categories: The first is a series of videos consisting of bad logical arguments written in text wherein he states that if one thing is true, therefore another thing is true. He then declares the one to be true, and, thus, “proves” the other to be true. The general tone of these is to establish his rejection of conceptual reality as we know it. He takes issue with fundamentals the calendar system, the currency system, grammar, and more. He goes into painfully little depth, asserting magnificent ideas such as controlling religion, but never explaining how or for what end. The second category is a series of videos consisting of him acting out his political philosophy in an obviously disturbed manner, such as
this video of him burning a flag in the desert.
By these videos alone, the dominance of his mental illness is evident when it comes to any actions he would have taken. Nevertheless, the fact that he rejected the government and planned the assassination of his congressional representative tells us that, whatever his mental state, he is not apolitical nor were his murders apolitical.
I point this out because many conservatives, as an early line of defense, rejected that Loughner has any politics at all. I've seen words like “lunatic,” “insane,” “crazy,” and so forth. Derogatory connotations aside, those words are all apt of him, but they do not count for a damn in disproving the political nature of his actions a week ago—nor
can such nature be disproved, for the evidence supporting it is too overwhelming.
Thus I come to my conclusion rather early in the discussion: I conclude that, while conservative politics and rhetoric did not make Loughner mentally ill in the first place, they did provide him with a murderous outlet for his disturbed thoughts. In the question of whether the conservative movement is somehow responsible for Loughner's actions, I deem the answer “yes,” albeit indirectly. I reject overtly obvious scapegoats, such as Sarah Palin's website with crosshairs over Rep. Giffords, as having had anything to do with the shootings. Rather, there are two primary recipients of blame here:
First is the right-wing propaganda machine in general, which is breathtakingly hateful in its language and unequivocally obstinate in its framing. This does indict many conservative public figures (including Palin), but not for specific actions so much as their strategy of scoring political victories by framing politics as war and stopping just short of calling for armed revolution.
Second, and more importantly, is the conservative movement itself, which has degenerated into a state of intellectual derangement. Many of conservatism's ideological causes are fantastically irrelevant to the present state of our society, becoming relevant only because conservatives force the controversy into the public debate, and are fraught with logical and scientific absurdities. How could people care about such nonsense? When it comes to legitimate controversies, the conservative point of view is often just as absurd, which is perhaps even worse. It is the modern conservative movement which encompasses both the most outrageous and the most dangerous ideas in politics today, as expressed by its share of domestic terrorism: 100 percent. I'm not even talking about the dominant stuff, the Christian fascism and the class warfare. I'm talking about the even crazier stuff, secretly whispered on the fringes. Stuff that doesn't make any sense, and doesn't need to. It is in this context that Loughner's affiliation with conservatism is most obvious, and it is in this context that my conclusion is most strongly enforced: A crazy political movement will attract crazy people.
Someone as far right as Loughner isn't simply anti-liberal, but anti-government altogether. To the extent he was informed by vitriolic right-wing rhetoric, it was probably the substance more than the style which appealed to him. In other words, if he carried out this attack because of something he heard from the media, I expect that what he heard would have been more along the lines of “This country will be destroyed if we don't cut spending,” rather than “We need to take out any politician who opposes spending cuts.” It would be his own thinking to generate the imperative of violent action. All of this sets him apart from your rank-and-file Tea Partier, most of whom are complacent sheep who love to feel self-important and morally superior but aren't particularly passionate about
what they actually believe in so long as it comes from their accepted conservative authorities—demonstrable by the inconsistency of their acceptance of political pragmatism from Republicans and from Democrats, given how much of governance nowadays is pragmatic. Loughner, in contrast, was as infuriated at the sight of President Bush as you might expect him to have been at the sight of President Obama. He is truly worthy of the “far”-right label, and I would sooner compare him to the Unabomber than Sean Hannity. He is dedicated and passionate, because he has his own reasons to be, which are suggested as a consequence of mental illness by his increasing estrangement with reality and desire to retreat into the world of dreams. Politics became the target of his disordered thinking, and conservative ideology became his outlet. How? Whatever the specifics, we know it is not flattering for conservatism.
As it turns out, the specifics of his right-wing affiliations are still a public mystery. We do know he advocated a return to a currency system based on gold and silver, which is a classic far-right position. We know he compared a woman who had an abortion to a terrorist, again textbook conservative. (He is also extremely sexist in general, and increasingly so, which is probably more likely an artifact of his mental illness than of his politics, despite the fact that the farther right you go the more strongly misogynistic political ideology becomes.) We know he believes the government is a fraud and “unconstitutional,” both indicative of far-right positions. We know he subscribes to the belief that the government uses grammar to control people's minds, which initially I didn't realize was a far-right view, but, as documented by the New York Times, likely came from a specific far-right website.
The confounding factor is that his conservatism seems to be absolute, which is uncommon. Extreme conservatives tend to go radical in one of three directions: economic conservatism, social conservatism, and anarchical conservatism—not all three at once. But Loughner's views suggest ultraconservatism across the board. This further lends itself to the culpability of the conservative movement as a whole.
Before moving on, I think you should take a look at some of these documentations of right-wing derangement. I collected these links over the course of the week so that you may appreciate my next argument with fewer distractions from the presumptions I make, whose accuracy is borne out in these links. Notice that each one comes from a different source.
http://www.dailykos.com/tv/w/002793/http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/markos-moulitas/137367-violence-from-the-righthttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/11/AR2011011105685.htmlhttp://www.seattlepi.com/national/1110ap_us_congresswoman_shot_palin.htmlhttp://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/nothing-to-see-here-folks.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/us/10shooter.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=allI want to talk about what this terrorist attack portends for the country. In that regard, the most important outcome by far is the reaction of liberals and conservatives to his terrorist attack.
As the right becomes more dangerous and violent, the left comes under increasing provocation. Eventually, as more of our public figures are killed, maimed, silenced, sued, and harassed, the left's reaction will itself become more extreme. If terrorist acts like the Tuscon shootings became commonplace, you would see a comparable radicalization on the left, and domestic tranquility would drop to nadirs not seen since the Vietnam era or possibly even the Depression. As it stands, the left is still highly factionalized, disorganized, and complacent. Thus, there has not been a coherent or dangerous counterstroke to the Tuscon shootings. There has been simply verbal outrage, and accusations of right-wing complicity (which are quite appropriate, but perhaps not sufficient). Thus, from the standpoint of the agency of the left, the shootings pose no threat to our national wellbeing.
From the right, it is another story. What I have been looking for is a sign of “We've become radical enough; let's not go any further for a while.” With the decay of the conservative movement, and the evaporation of its intellectual underpinnings, conservative politics have become more and more ridiculous. Yet from within the movement there has been no successful effort—nor even an apparent effort—to arouse some shame. Shameless, is what modern conservatism is. Totally self-absorbed, totally preposterous. Right away after these shootings occurred it was apparent that a conservative impetus on Loughner's part was highly likely. What, then, were the reactions of rank-and-file conservatives?
The most dominant reaction was a sanctimonious call for solemnity and solidarity, which tends to dominate any tragic event, no matter how inappropriate it may be. Quite a few people on the message boards I visited—and for this purpose I ventured into the halls of several right-wing websites, such as Free Republic and Fox News—insisted that any “political” debate in the aftermath of the attack was inappropriate and demanded that we focus on the loss inflicted by this “senseless” violence. For many people, this kind of a reaction is genuine, and I duly note that, but for some it is a shield to deflect responsibility. (Who remembers the cry of Republicans over the years that it was inappropriate to have a given debate at a given time because some tragedy was on? Remember Hurricane Katrina? “Now is not the time to point fingers.” Well, fuckers, when
is the time? Oh, that's right:
Never. After the tragedy has cooled, the news cycle will move on, and the opportunity for public accountability is lost. When questioned, later on, these same people will reply, “We need to move on from this.”) Thus, this type of reaction, though largely apolitical, does have a political component, and that component does not speak well of conservatives, as it shows no attempt to take responsibility and moderate the rhetoric going forward.
The second most common reaction I encountered from conservatives was for people to implicitly accept the political dimension of the attack by choosing to acknowledge the accusation against conservative hate speech, but to explicitly reject culpability in one of four ways:
The first of these I mentioned above, and has been the most common of the four: People making this rejection claimed that Loughner is apolitical and that there was therefore no political motive (and thus no conservative culpability) to his actions. (Many of the people issuing this rejection demonstrated their defensiveness and insecurity by taking the time to claim that the left has been
particularly odious in its own hate speech, even going so far as to try to politicize the attack.)
The second rejection is that Loughner is actually a liberal. This line of reasoning depends upon his history of smoking pot (which apparently only liberals do), the relative conservativeness of Representative Giffords when compared to the House Democratic Caucus as a whole, the presence of books with a liberal message (alongside books with a conservative one, conveniently ignored) in his online list of favorite books, and a diary written by a Daily Kos member who said that Giffords was “dead to [him]” after she voted for a different Democrat other than Nancy Pelosi to be Speaker of the House when the new Congress began earlier this month. Of all the rejections made by conservatives, this one is probably the most hateful and provocative, and bodes the poorest for the future of political discourse in America.
The third is conceptually like the second. People making this rejection ignored the issue of their own culpability in favor of a tu quoque argument: People on
both sides of the political spectrum are crazy like this. Well, that's true in the binary sense, but not in the relative sense. There is no parity of any sort between left-wing and right-wing radicalism in this country today.
The fourth rejection, and least common is that Loughner is indeed a conservative, but is a loner who acted entirely by himself and is completely outside the will and prompting of any conservative institution or organization. This simple denial of culpability is perhaps the most telling of all: Conservatives are aware of their hate speech, but deny that it has any ramifications. To actually believe that, politics would have to be a game for them. For some, when you get down to it, it is a game. That is irresponsibility in the extreme. For others it is not a game, and the hypocrisy disgusts.
The third most common reaction among conservatives (the first two being a call for solemnity and a rejection of culpability), and the last of the common reactions that I observed, was to characterize the terrorist attack as a reprisal against liberal abuses. This kind of reaction, despite explicit words of condemnation of the attack, implicitly condones it. It is not a rejection, but an admission, of sorts, coupled with a defiant “You deserved it!” This view was particularly common on the Fox News website.
I was honestly hoping, although not particularly expecting, for public figures in the Republican Party to make some kind of an admission of guilt, not for the shooting but for the atmosphere of virulent rhetoric in our national political discourse. But there was no such admission, not a one. Instead, I learned that something called
The Civility Project, meant to encourage governors and members of Congress (in both parties) to sign a short pledge to conduct themselves more civilly in political discourse, was shutting down due to violent threats from conservatives and lack of interest—with only three members of Congress signing it.
Thus, as I see it, the reaction from the right is one of guiltlessness and aggression. They continue to have no shame, and apparently have every intention of becoming even more egregious in their behavior.
How much more serious will things get? I think that depends on whether the Tea Party enjoys further electoral success, and whether the conservative base, which is ever so elderly, dies out before it can kindle a new era of sustainable right-wing terrorism in this country.
I am moved, in this occasion, to call for a new anti-sedition law which empowers the government to arrest and charge right-wing leaders with sedition—primarily in the media and the militias rather than in elected office, although not necessarily to the exclusion thereof. It would also provide for the dismantling of seditious organizations like Fox News and sedition charges for its overseers. The law would not apply specifically to right-wingers, but the practical effect would be almost exclusively limited to that side of the spectrum. We have not, nor can we win the political debate, nor have we nor could we even so much as restore civility. It will take further terrorist acts, and possibly a counterstroke, before domestic social forces rein in the right wing. The only way to preempt that is to nip it in the bud before doing so actually would spark an insurrection.
Given the extraordinary nature of the law, it would require an explicit expiration date, and no doubt would make domestic tranquility worse in the short term. Nevertheless, we have never seen more clearly the road on which the Tea Party and the dying conservative movement are taking us, than we saw it last weekend, when one conservative was insane enough to actually try to act on conservative principles.
