This will be a boring post, there is nothing to figure out, but I think I want to put down my personal response.
I first heard about it on talk radio perhaps an hour after it happened. I was driving to Walgreens to get tobacco. Short drive. I now only listen to talk radio while driving, takes too much time, so, short drive, I listened little.
I was immediately heartened. There had been a fusillade, perhaps eight to ten seconds, and then the citizenry had reacted and the gunman was disarmed and pinned to the ground. I had no details at that point, other than that a congress woman had been shot along with many others, and my heart went pitter-pat: this wasn't VA Tech, people didn't sit like lambs and wait for slaughter, they reacted and won, or won anyway as well as you can when 19 have already been shot. But it was clearly a nut job --mass killings in America are always nut jobs-- and the only defense against that kind of thing possible, citizen reaction, had taken place. I would far have preferred that someone pulled their own gun and shot the bastard dead, but it was a very small group, nearly everyone there took a bullet, perhaps someone armed just didn't have time to react before being shot, perhaps in such a small group there was no one armed. But the assailant had been disarmed, an excellent result. --I noticed that this very liberal talk show was really straining at the bit to find "facts" by which they could blame the shooting on conservatives.
That was what I knew for some hours, and then later that night read more and found... they were blaming it on conservatives! Specifically Sarah Palin and the Tea Party and the "climate of hate". This was nuts. The guy was clearly a nut. Any American at all who follows the news would automatically associate this with Columbine or VA Tech and not Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma bombing. To try to ascribe political motivation to a clear nut meant you had to be a nut yourself, and yet this was what the left was doing, and this was my only puzzlement: Did they not understand they were coming across as nuts? Were they that out of touch that they couldn't see that's how they would be perceived? Or were they just that dumb? Or that much in their own bubble? Dumb/bubble/nuts, that was the question, and it's the only interesting thing about this whole last week.
I think the MSM simply doesn't realize that they've lost the ability to determine the narrative. They simply aren't trusted anymore. It doesn't matter how consistent or loud their message might be, no one in America listens anymore. It's recognized they have "a viewpoint". Okay, some people share that viewpoint, but no one not already convinced of the narrative finds that their story line has any moral force. The great mass of Americans now think for themselves, --and of course, there are other sources of news.
The logic behind the MSMs attempted smear was clear: They fear the Tea Party because they fear an independent public, especially one voting Republican. It's clearly accepted by everyone that inflamed rhetoric inflames passions. Clearly, inflamed passions, a Democrat shot, the Tea Party did it. But the guy was a nut. The simple, obvious, immediately known fact, that the guy had shot many people, indicated he was a nut. Americans knew that, the MSM knew that, but they still thought they could spin it. I ascribe the whole silliness to their simply not knowing yet how far they have fallen. Stupidity is good, when it's in the other guys. Never over estimate the intelligence of the present elites. In reference to media influence, America is a better place now that it was just a week ago. The liberal press is several percentage points more bozo than it was even before. This is good.
The genuine hatred the left has for the right? I mean the real hatred, and not just the low IQ policy attempt to affix blame? It is real. That's because you can't be a leftist without hatred in your heart for other groups. That's because leftism, with the state as the moral center, can have no self-identification other than that given by the state, that means they function as a group, and any group in opposition to the interest (or presumed interests) of the state is hated. Conservatives hate evil, it's a matter of God given standards. They might see more of that evil in one group than in another, but still it's the evil they hate, not the group. Liberals just hate men, which is why they can so easily run roughshod over rights, lives, and sensitivities.
And that's what I take away from this week. Apparently, in Obama reading the tea leaves and so stating in his memorial address that it was not inflamed rhetoric that caused the shooting, the left has taken it's cue and so has dropped the meme as well. Individuals certainly don't want to do that, they do genuinely hate conservatives, but presumably all "respectable" spokesman will let the story line lie. They won't retract, they won't apologize, they won't introspect, but they will go on to something else.
Score a point for freedom. --And Sarah has gone up a few points too.
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