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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul Smith who wrote (153711)	1/10/2011 10:26:10 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542247

I posted that simply for information purposes. Not my own views. Fwiw, my view, which I've put in other posts, is that Loughner's political views are far less important than the propensity of far right politicians to demonize their political opponents. It creates a climate in which unstable individuals feel legitimized in their violent fantasies. That's one worry. There is, of course, a second, which is not seriously involved this time, in which violence is used as a political end, even organized, movement based violence. That's far more likely to come from the right, more than a few movements, right now than from the left. They also feel legitimized by the demonization that takes place by political leaders.

To: Paul Smith who wrote (153711)	1/10/2011 12:54:33 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 542247

>>Isn't this sort of like trying to figure out if Mark Chapman was right-wing or left-wing? Not every mentally ill person is the reincarnation of John Wilkes Booth.<< I agree. The man's views were not coherent enough to pin him on a specific spot on the political spectrum. But whether he idolized Attila the Hun or founded his own local chapter of the Nancy Pelosi fan club, what he did was to attack a Congressperson who had been targeted for removal from office by Sarah Palin's PAC, branded as a traitor on AM talk radio, and directly threatened a number of times, because she voted in favor of the ACA. To me, his choice of victim and the context surrounding that choice is more revealing than Loughner's writings are. His illness made him vulnerable to incendiary rhetoric.