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I've been thinking about the shooting in Arizona.
Do I think the Right has responsibility? Not directly. I do think the overall environment shapes the targets of the unbalanced. I think they made their beds with the eliminationist rhetoric and they aren't in any position to say, "We didn't mean for anyone to take us seriously."
When the talking heads of a movement are saying they intend to take to the hills and foment revolution if they don't win at the polls, then they don't get to day, "we didn't mean for this to happen," when someone tries to kill someone they have labeled an enemy.
But that's not what spurred me to write. Lots of people are saying such things, and better than I.
No, I want to talk about the scale of the catastrophe.
Oro Valley has a population of 43,000 people. 20 of them were casualties.
Looking at the data, Manhattan has a population of 1.7 million. Which means, as a percentage of the population, this was about half as potent as the WTC attacks on That Tuesday.
That's some pretty serious numbers for one guy to chalk up. It's going to have a pretty significant effect on the community. Oro Valley isn't going to be the same for quite awhile (esp. because, in the poking around I did, it has a vastly lower rate of violent crime than the state average).
That's the real fruit of the violent rhetoric... the communities in which it comes home to roost are going to be dramatically affected; and I don't think this is the last of such events, because I don't think it was the first.
Do I think the Right has responsibility? Not directly. I do think the overall environment shapes the targets of the unbalanced. I think they made their beds with the eliminationist rhetoric and they aren't in any position to say, "We didn't mean for anyone to take us seriously."
When the talking heads of a movement are saying they intend to take to the hills and foment revolution if they don't win at the polls, then they don't get to day, "we didn't mean for this to happen," when someone tries to kill someone they have labeled an enemy.
But that's not what spurred me to write. Lots of people are saying such things, and better than I.
No, I want to talk about the scale of the catastrophe.
Oro Valley has a population of 43,000 people. 20 of them were casualties.
Looking at the data, Manhattan has a population of 1.7 million. Which means, as a percentage of the population, this was about half as potent as the WTC attacks on That Tuesday.
That's some pretty serious numbers for one guy to chalk up. It's going to have a pretty significant effect on the community. Oro Valley isn't going to be the same for quite awhile (esp. because, in the poking around I did, it has a vastly lower rate of violent crime than the state average).
That's the real fruit of the violent rhetoric... the communities in which it comes home to roost are going to be dramatically affected; and I don't think this is the last of such events, because I don't think it was the first.
