I'm not seeking out articles about the recent shooting.

[conuly]

I don't have the energy, and I frankly refuse.

However, I am reading what people post on my FList.

First, apparently the shooter unstable. Paranoid conspiracies involving brainwashing and mind control was the least of it.

That is tragic for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it gives the people who came up with this violent rhetoric a way out! They're going to go "Oh, he was crazy" and "oh, he's insane" and "oh, it's not OUR fault he took our jokes seriously" and they're not going to get what they deserve! (And to be clear, what the hatemongers deserve is to be humiliated and permanently voted out of office. Not, god forbid, any form of bodily harm, up to and including cold-blooded murder.) They're going to weasel out of it! Nevermind that that sort of talk was shameful and unconscionable before anything ever came of it. Nevermind that it could as easily have been somebody less easy to brush away who took them up on their "jokes". (And if we're going with paranoid conspiracy theories... this is the internet. Can any of us prove this guy's videos were up there a week ago? Then again, these are the people who think that if you pull something off the internet, it's like it's never there and people will be taken in if you claim they were really surveyor's marks. Let's not give them too much credit for cleverness.)

Of course, if the threats and the images were all okay, all on the up-and-up, they wouldn't be scrambling to excuse those now. Sure, okay, this guy was mentally ill. But I don't know, it's my understanding that this sort of thing doesn't exist in a vacuum. His ideas still came from *somewhere*, his actions still had *some* cause.

And of course, they're now looking for a second suspect. Edit: Strike that, seems he was actually just a cab driver. Well, that's some good news.

I don't know. I can't even put one word in front of the other right now. If you don't mind graphic images (that's a serious warning!) you might read this post on the matter.

Comments

[ihcoyc.livejournal.com]

Oklahoma City. The Holocaust Museum shooting. More than thirty five years of anti-abortion murders, bombings, and stalkings. You don't have to be Batman to see a pattern emerging.

[conuly]

But that's just silly talk. Everybody knows that it wasn't the Ayrabs doing that stuff, and those are the only REAL terrorists!