This is what terrorism looks like.

[pecunium]

Yesterday I got a phone call from my father about the church shooting in Knoxville.

He called me because he's affiliated, though slightly removed of late, with the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church (which is the one which was shot up). He might have been worried I would think he was present, and worry he'd been shot.

The freepers of the world might not be have been able to crow about the need for more guns in churches (my dad has a CCW, from his days as a deputy sherrif, and carries). I say might because the people in the church reacted with gratifying speed and had the shooter disarmed and pinned within something like 15 seconds. My father (who was in the Marines, as well as having been a cop) might have pulled his piece, but I don't really think he'd have had a clear shot. Which would have been worth it, just to watch the freeperis' heads wrestle the cognitive dissonance of a guy with a gun being helpless in the face of concerted action by peaceful, "liberal" types (and, lest anyone think having a CCW and carrying a pistol all the time is something liberals can't do... my father didn't vote for Clinton in '92, he voted for Jesse Jackson).

All of, that, however, is by the boards. What really matters (and is going to be glossed) is hinted at in the headline for that piece I linked to.

Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity on accused shooter's reading list

The letter this guy (who appears, to have been planning suicide by cop, as well as the political statement) wrote make it, at the very least a hate crime. But as Orcinus has been pointing out for years, this is really terrorism, and of the sort we ought to be expecting; and trying to stop, because it is the most common sort.

The letter found in this guy's car said he hated liberals, because of how they were ruining the country, and that he couldn't get at the people they elected, so he was going after the ones who voted.

People like Medved, Micheal Reagan, O'Reilly, Coulter, Limbaugh, etc. have been saying this sort of thing for years. They get glossed with the nasty little rubric that it's humor, comedy, social commentary. All the while they spout that any liberal who says the least little thing they dislike is corrupting the youth/nation/world with terrible efficiency.

No liberal can make harmless jokes (or social commentary) but "C"onservatives who say that liberals need to be killed, (save for a couple kept pets in colleges to show how pathetic/dangerous they are) or the only way to talk to them is with baseball bats, or their candidates for office ought to be hanged for treason, or... well the list goes on, and I don't want to get more tedious; "C"onservatives who say such things aren't to be taken seriously.

They are only making jokes.

Well... the people who listen to those jokes, are taking up terrorism. The lone wolf style (as with Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph) which is hardest to stop.

But, as the Terrorism threat level is raised (hey.... it's an election year, have to keep people scared; so they will vote for Daddy, who promises he can beat up the monsters under the bed) the focus isn't on nativist bastards who want to bring on the Day of the Rope, and hang all the liberals from the nearest telephone lines and make examples for the rest of the nation.

No, we shall instead be told about all those nasty brown people who, "hate our way of life" and "despise us for our 'Freedom'™" rather than the homegrown types who are actually trying to supress our freedom, and destroy our way of life.

Comments

[rubin110.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

You win the day with this, Terry. You win.

thank you

[dragonet2.livejournal.com]

well said.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Brilliant; I am going to link to this. Thank you.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

How would you solve the problem?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

What problem? The lack of awareness that the people who have consistently been most likely to commit acts of terrorism in the US are white "C"hristian males?

Talk about it. Stop ignoring it. Make it plain the people who most actively, steadfastly and, yes violently, hate the way the US is constructed are those white "C"ristian males.

This shit festers because it's ignored. Silence = Death. To be quiet about it, to treat each case as an abberation; rather than stitch the sordid truth into a visible fabric; while conversesly letting the Malkins, the Dobbs, the Savages of the Right to trumpet every arrest of someone who isn't white as part of some movement (and then ignore the wrongness of the accusations they make) is to give tacit approval of people who shoot liberals.

Which breeds more of the same.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

They claim it's just comedy.

Obviously, there should be a rigorous inquiry into that claim, involving sudden and unanticipated visits by trained comedians. Such experienced inquisitors, perhaps with the backing of the Pope, could arrive at any moment, and subject these alleged comedians to the non-tortures allowed by the Justice Department and the Attorney General of the United States.

Indeed, with a little care, it should be possible for persistent pressure during phone-ins to bring the malefactors to the point of invoking their own, terrible, unexpected, fate.

(You can all see where this is headed, right?)

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

"I think a baseball bat is the most effective way these days" - Ann Coulter

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Next! On the Jesuit Comedy Hour! It's Ann Coulter in the Auto de Fey!

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

I don't know you. CAKMPLS pointed me.

As a former Nashville UU, I'm glad to see this.

[galacticvoyeur.livejournal.com]

My personal experiences with bullies, from grade school through recent years (I work in a factory) is that, as they beat the crap out of you, verbally at first, more always follows, for daring to stand up to them, they laugh and chortle and tell you that they're just kidding around.

No, they are not. And, you know what? I've never had a bully "go away" when I ignored him, which is what your mother always tells you to do. The only thing that works, and I only got the chance to do this once, in the 10th grade: punch them, hard, immediately and repeatedly, in the face.

That worked. 11th and 12th grades weren't nearly as bad for me...

[summers-place.livejournal.com]

You sure we're not related?

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

Thank you for writing this. In addition to saddening and angering me, incidents like this scare me, as I expect them to become more common as we get later in the election year, and perhaps after.

I've linked to it in my LJ.

[pgdudda.livejournal.com]

I can say that I'm no related, except maybe "by experience". Even after Columbine, the majority of American adults did not wake up and recognize the complicity implicit in the "boys will be boys" philosophy. Ignoring bullying simply leads to many smaller-scale Columbines, ranging from bloodied noses up to a roomful of bullet-ridden dead bodies.

The lyrics below are excerpted from "Language of Violence" by Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, and sum up the ignored element nicely:

"The first day of school was always the hardest / The first day of school, the hallways the darkest / Like a gauntlet, the voices haunted / Walking in with his thin skin, lowered chin / He knew the names that they would taunt him with / Faggot sissy punk queen queer / Although he'd never had sex in his 15 years / And when they harassed him it was for a reason / And when they provoked him it became open season [...] But death is the silence in this cycle of violence [...] You won't hear the screaming until it stops..."

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

Also here via cakmpls.

Very succinct and true. I worked at Planned Parenthood in the nineties. There are a huge number of native terrorists (and bullies and stalkers and worse) who are ignored by the Powers That Be. I had to walk past them, sometimes confront them, every day for nearly four years, until I burned out. They get away with everything, up to and including murder.

[kouredios.livejournal.com]

I was thinking, today, about how that adage "Words can't hurt" is not just wrong, but harmful.

I've taught middle, high school and college. The number of times I've interrupted bullying behavior and gotten, "But I'm just kidding" as a response is hard to count. Every time I say something along the lines of: "If no one's laughing but you, you're doing it wrong." It usually makes them stop and think, but I still have to say it every time I catch it. We all have to be doing this, these days. And meanwhile adult members of our society are still acting like 8th graders.

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

I have decided that the thing I most despise about people like Hannity, Coulter and O'Reilly is the knowledge that they are more then likely spewing what they spew to entertain and make a buck.
That they, can, in fact give less then two shits for the results of their actions.
THAT is what elevates them beyond the level of normal scum.

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

That was how I stopped my brother bully.
He only understood and accepted pain.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

Great comments!

Just curious, what's with the quotes around the C's?

[summers-place.livejournal.com]

Note that those are capital C's. I see the quotes as differentiating Big-C conservatives and Big-C Christians (TM) from conservatives and Christians in general.

Or something like that. It's like another way of pointing out that these idiots do not and ought not to be understood as representing all conservatives and Christians.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I think they do care about the results. They want (need) liberal to remain a dirty word (or beome a worse one). They make their money on that.

If something like this happens, it's good for them. Coulter would, I think, be happy to see some of the violence she espouses happen. Savage, Beck, Limbaugh, I think they would love it.

Then again, I believe they mean what they say, and I think it speaks volumes about the Republican Party that it allows them to sit at the table.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

As summers_place said, it's to make it plain I am not making a blanket statement about Christians, but rather about a subset within Christianity.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

What scares me is the confluence of events which make the rise of demagogues easier, and the fascisitic tendencies which are rising.

It can happen here.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

I call the kind of person several of my relatives are, 'Plague Christians.' Because, rather than just, y'know, behaving in a Christlike manner, they behave as if they think their religion is a disease they must pass to AS MANY CARRIERS AS POSSIBLE before they die ...

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. But when one comes right out to say that one is dismissed as alarmist, so just one raise the temp slowly to boil a frog, you have to point out trendlines, rather than just tell people facism is on the march.