The Disturbing World of the Arizona Shooter

The initial campaign to connect in people's minds the Arizona shootings with "violent eliminationist rhetoric" from the Right continues in the modified form of a campaign to "tone down" violent rhetoric in politics and the media.  We are now witnessing a more subtle and devious way to connect idea of violent rhetoric from the Right with the Arizona shootings. And it deflects attention from the issues which should be under discussion as a result of this terrible tragedy.

This red herring is especially disingenuous after the shooter's friends have said that he was "on the left" politically in high school then apparently stopped watching the news, didn't listen to the radio and stopped taking sides in the normal political process.  But he was obsessed with the 2007 "new-age" anarchist internet movie "Zeitgeist".  Produced BEFORE Sarah Palin and the Tea Party were in the national news.  The shooter was also reported to have said in 2007 that Representative Giffords was a "phony" because she did not answer to his satisfaction his irrational question about government and grammar. He may have also developed a certain obsession with her.  None of his acquaintances seem to connect him IN ANY WAY with "right wing" politics. RS McCain links Dan Collins, a father whose child developed a rare form of childhood-onset schizophrenia, concerning the thought processes of schizophrenics.

 Pima college has release a disturbing video in which the shooter talks about what he is thinking as he walks around campus. It makes Collins' heartbreaking observations come to life. Drew M. says this  about the video:

This appeared last night and the reaction from folks on Twitter and email was that it's a tough watch.

The guy is genuinely disturbed. We knew that but to hear and see it so clearly is pretty shocking.

I would love to sit with Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Paul Krugman and the like to watch this. Then when it's over, I'd like them to explain to me how they think this broken and damaged man was in any way influenced by the 'tone' of our political discourse. . . .

Also read his quote from a commentator in the New York Times about the misuse of this tragedy to further a political agenda.  (The Times has backed off its original story line, probably due to the rapid response of competitive voices and real journalists).

Getting back to the Zeitgeist thing:  The Zeitgeist movie's producers, like many new-age types, paid attention to conspiracy ideas from across the political spectrum.  But the style of their movie was typical of activist art from the Left, and the movie won an award at a lefty film festival.  No wonder, since it attacked Christianity, suggested that the U.S. government was complicit in 9/11 and warned against "banking interests" and secret plots to start wars.

On the other hand, it also stated that the income tax is unconstitutional.  I haven't yet fully figured out why "truther" anarchist filmmakers who hate Fox News often get along very well with big-government leftists at rallies and activist film festivals. I would expect anarchists and big-government leftists to be ideologically incompatible. But then again, sometimes lefty anarchists espouse some big-government ideas -- which sort of makes them atypical anarchists.

Somehow, I am not confident that Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Paul Krugman and the like will now condemn violent rhetoric and images in left-wing activist "art"   like they condemned violent rhetoric and images from the Right. Art must reflect freedom of expression (unless it is critical of one of the Left's more fashionable "communities" of the moment).  These commentators cannot be consistent and retain their affinity with today's progressives. And they already have a designated villain.