The blame game

The RH Reality Check's Jodi Jacobson is sadly blaming the Tuscon shootings on political rhetoric.

Clearly, the person immediately responsible for the deaths and injuries is Jared Lee Loughner, the 22-year-old who took a gun to Giffords constituent meet-and-greet in what is now clear was a premeditated act to kill Giffords. Indications are that Loughner, who is now in custody, is a mentally unstable young man who had at some point decided to assassinate Giffords, though full details of his history and his own thinking are yet to be evaluated.....

But we all know the problem is much deeper than one person.

We do? Hmmmm... That's a rather large assumption. Maybe all the fans of the RH Reality Check are of the belief that a young man with obvious mental health issues (a monetary system conspiracy theorist who also thought the government was trying to brainwash people by controlling grammar, etc.) was just a symptom of the underlying problems.

In fact, to some degree Loughner's mental health status is irrelevant because his actions did not occur in a vacuum. He is a perhaps deranged or schizophrenic individual who acted on his own but he is also a perhaps deranged individual whose actions were in fact suggested by a pathologically violent political discourse that actively uses and suggests the use of violence and weaponry as personal "remedies" to political dissatisfaction.

And perhaps it was violent video games. Perhaps it was violent music. Perhaps it was the fluoride in our water. I have no evidence for the above "perhaps" just like Jodi doesn't have a shred of evidence that Loughner's actions were "suggested by a pathologically violent political discourse that actively uses and suggests the use of violence...."

That's just the story she wants to sell to herself.

UPDATE: Here's Glenn Reynolds -

To be clear, if you're using this event to criticize the "rhetoric" of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you're either: (a) asserting a connection between the "rhetoric" and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you're not, in which case you're just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?

I understand the desperation that Democrats must feel after taking a historic beating in the midterm elections and seeing the popularity of ObamaCare plummet while voters flee the party in droves. But those who purport to care about the health of our political community demonstrate precious little actual concern for America's political well-being when they seize on any pretext, however flimsy, to call their political opponents accomplices to murder.

Where is the decency in that?