Earlier today* US Congress Representative Gabrielle Gifford was shot at point-blank range by an assailant who then sprayed bullets into the surrounding public and staffing aides. News tonight seems to be that Gifford might make it out ok, apparently she came out of surgery successfully and is able to communicate on some level with her family.
Others were not so lucky. Six people were killed in the incident, including District Judge John Roll and a child. Unfortunately not much information has been released about the others.
Many have been quick to suggest that we should not consider this shooting politically motivated. I would love to live with that kind of naivety. An assassination attempt on a politician is political. You cannot divorce the two concepts. James Fallows of the Atlantic has a good summation of this.
Fallows further explains that we may never really understand the political motives because as we like to say, the personal is political. Jared Loughner’s own personal politics are probably not likely to resonate with very many people.
Which brings us to the other side. The people that insist they know why Loughner did this. Predictably the hard right tries to declare he’s a communist because he apparently listed that he liked “The Communist Manifesto”. Of course he also listed that he liked the writings of right-wing darling Ayn Rand and right-wing dictator Adolph Hitler. Liberals say he seems to be really into the gold standard and he must be a tea-partier.
The only thing you could possibly say for sure is that this individual was extremely anti-government, which is a feature of extreme ideologies on both ends.
It will take a while for the dust to settle on this, but I will say this: Sarah Palin needs to apologize.
Ok, that feels out of nowhere considering I just finished explaining that we have no idea where Loughner true affiliations lie, but I will explain. Palin created a list of 20 people of congress that needed to be removed due to their support of the health care bill. With this list she created a map of targets, made with gun cross hairs. The graphic can still be seen here.
She and/or her handlers decided it would be prudent to make this graphic disappear off of her website. It seems even Palin can realize that it’s awfully gauche to suggest target practice on a woman nearly killed by gunfire. That is why she needs to apologize; if it’s bad enough to remove from your website, it’s bad enough to be an adult and admit you made a mistake.
And with that I end, with my thoughts in a jumble.
