sabotabby | Other things I don't get

1. The shooter is probably mentally ill, so the attack is probably not politically motivated.

This, to me, is a disturbing statement, both because of its ableism and because of its denial of agency. I have clinical depression but I am also politically left-wing. Glenn Beck is bipolar and is a fascist. Many suicide bombers are mentally ill, and yet this can be conveniently forgotten if the perpetrator is brown. (Only white people are mentally ill, right?)

Most paranoid schizophrenics manage not to kill people. No paranoid schizophrenic, unless he or she is living in the wilderness, is entirely isolated from social, cultural, and political context.

2. The shooter may not be a card-carrying member of any political party or movement, so the attack is not political.

It's a very American idea, really, that one has to be registered as a voting member of a political party to be considered political. I'm a socialist, but this can mean all sorts of things. I'm not a member of any political party (the only political card I hold is an IWW red card, and I can hardly be considered an active member these days), but I still somehow manage to hold political opinions.

I was at a G20 rally yesterday. It was an interesting mix of people, including some folks I can only assume were undercover cops. There were very few familiar faces and a staggering variety of political opinions, many of which I don't hold. I'm not a pro-pot activist*, a Trotskyist, a member of the NDP, an anarchist, or a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, but all of those people were there, strange bedfellows for a sort of nebulous cause, and grouped, however uncomfortably, under the broad political designation of "left."

The right, in North America, is nearly as diverse and just as full of internal contradiction, if a little better organized. One cannot simply assume that an individual is not politically right-wing because they don't vote Republican, or because they smoke pot. We can consider anti-government militia types and people who think that the government should have staggeringly more power as broadly right-wing, just as we can consider anarchists and Stalinists as broadly left-wing.

3. The guns at political events issue.

Funnily enough, I was just remarking the other day that I don't understand why there's not a huge movement of gun owners in favour of gun control. Granted, the gun enthusiasts I know may not be typical (hardcore types who want to be prepared come the revolution, sport shooters, and hunters), but beyond the revolutionary argument for gun ownership and perhaps financial considerations, I really can't imagine a logical argument against licensing and regulation. It seems like this could be an area of common ground between the right and the left, but American right-wingers really do seem to think there should be no restrictions on weapons whatsoever.

When I hear about people openly carrying guns to town hall events, it makes me wonder why there aren't more assassination attempts, or at least accidents. Honestly, Americans, you don't get how weird that looks to the rest of the world.

4. Both sides have extremes.

This is wishy-washy liberalism at its worst. The American left is flaccid, passive, and fairly right-wing by global standards. Some people on the American right use Mexican migrants as target practice, others call for torture and assassination, and some openly admit that they can't wait for the apocalypse. There's no balance here, folks. Also, calling someone a "teabagger" is not the same as calling someone an "illegal," or worse.

5. Words have power/words don't have power.

When Ward Churchill wrote "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens" in 2001, the right (and large swaths of the left) went after him. Only the far-left granted him any sort of "right to free speech"; to the rest of North American political society, there was little distinction between a perceived justification of terrorist acts and actually committing terrorist acts. The right now seems to think that death threats are protected speech, so long as they're directed against the centre or left, and cannot be linked to actual acts of violence.

Just as asinine, of course, is the argument that political rhetoric alone will create a new Rwanda in the U.S., but I've seen much less of that argument on the intertubes.

6. The Nazis were left-wing.

What? I keep seeing this everywhere. What are they teaching in these schools?

7. You shouldn't politicize tragedy.

Really? No, really? Why the hell not?

* I think pot should be legal, don't get me wrong. I'm just incredibly apathetic about it.

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From:

upstart-crow.livejournal.com

Pretty much in full agreement with you, especially on point 1. point one is really frightening and upsetting me because it is ALWAYS the first question anyone asks.

From:

sabotabby

I think it's almost an understandable question to ask, since mostly everyone wants violent acts to be one-off events, and the idea of something isolated, irrational, and completely unpreventable is kind of reassuring. Systemic violence is much more difficult to get one's head around.

Never mind that mentally ill people don't have a statistically higher rate of perpetrating crime, or that crime committed by mentally ill people is largely preventable, or that marginalizing a significant segment of the population is harmful.

i'll tell you all my secrets but i'll lie about my past

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