Everyone seems to be playing their assigned role in reaction to the shootings at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic. Dude was clearly nuts. He beat his ex-wife and got arrested for being a peeping tom, so obviously he shouldn’t have been allowed to have a gun.
Oh, he wasn’t convicted of doing any of those things? Never mind.
He somehow managed to kill a police officer and then surrender peacefully? That’s a long way from what happens to black kid who slashes tires in Chicago. Maybe the police should have killed this guy just to remain consistent. Oh, and if anyone notices the discrepancy in treatment, they’re race-baiting morons and delusional fools, according the Colorado Fraternal Order of Police.
Of course, long before it was clear what had happened, my Twitter feed lit up like a Christmas tree with people blaming Republicans for inciting the attack. Maybe his alleged reference to “no more baby parts” supports that presumption. I just thought we were supposed to have some evidence before we started accusing people other than the shooter of being responsible for a spree killing.
And, finally, you have the really wretched folks who think murdering cops or Planned Parenthood employees is a great idea.
I guess now is the time to grind your ax.
I have no problem grinding that ax, at all.
Wait for actual evidence?
Shit, next thing you will be suggesting is that we should allow due process to be applied.
In the era of Facebook, it is all about tribalism and the hate and anger that it fuels. Sort of like the hate events in 1984 – except via social media.
This, by the way, explains Trump.
I agree it was unseemly how people jumped to conclusions about the motive. As it turns out, this seems to be similar to the case of John Salvi, who shot up to abortion clinics in Brookline Mass. in 1994. (Yes, this stuff goes back farther than that, in fact.) He was profoundly mentally ill, but his delusional system locked on to anti-abortion rhetoric. Seems like this guy is also nuts, but his nuttiness picked up on the baby parts harvesting thing.
So the bottom line is, when people go around saying that Planned Parenthood is the equivalent of Auschwitz and they engage in barbaric and vile practices, there are people listening who will take you seriously and act accordingly.
And who is to blame for the false baby parts claim?
It shouldn’t be surprising that the mailing lists of gullible paranoicas passed around among the far right christian grifting organizations bears a lot of similarity to Bruce Sterling’s fictional assassination spambot. And it makes the “that guy was just crazy” excuse wear a little thin when the grifters indulge in such violent and paranoid rhetoric.
And let’s not bring gun ownership into the conversation AGAIN! Too soon!
Except when this guy has access to guns and then I read about a waitress at Waffle House in Biloxi who asks a guy to put out his cigarette, so he shoots her in the head.
So, apparently we need more guns!
I thought this post was about axe ownership….
I wonder how many drove by a man with a gun looking strange near the PP and did not call the cops. Remember back in OCT. a woman call the 911 about a man with a gun and all she got was a lecture about open carry. That man proceeded to walk downtown Colorado Springs and randomly killed 3 people. This is about the gun.
I also wonder, this guy seems to have lived in NC and SC, just where was this man licensed to own a gun.
I think that as progressives, if we can’t find something to praise and support in our police, we are doing our cause considerable harm.
Yes, there are systemic problems and racism and persistent violence.
But shouldn’t it always be a good thing when a suspect is apprehended uninjured?
Here’s a counter-narrative to “the cops would have killed him if he was black”:
The cops initially on the scene shot it out with him. When a negotiator-type cop showed up, he was able to get him to surrender.
I propose that in this situation if the perp was black, he would also have been able to surrender.
So instead of criticizing these cops, obliquely, for something these cops were not involved with at this moment, lets give these cops our support for trying to protect everyone involved to the best of their abilities, which is in fact their job.
This is second multiple-fatality shooting incident by a mentally ill person in Colorado Springs in a month. Probably the non-axe-grinding and productive point of discussion is the poor state of mental health care, easy gun access, and possibly the narrative of violence put forward by the anti-abortion moment.
Im kind of pleased the cops responded the way they did. A number of them this being Colorado Springs, probably feel similarly to the guy about PP. But they didnt hesitate to try to end the situation.
This guy is a good case about the mental health system. He was a time bomb waiting to go off. But the system missed him. He was not much of a gun nut, from stories I have read. Did he get the gun recently? Can we revise things to catch real nut cases like this guy?
If he was black, there would BE no negotiator at the scene.
Not true. But a LEO negotiator isn’t the first on the scene. CS police did attempt to take out the PP suspect but failed.
Let’s also note that the Beltway Snipers were taken alive.
My first reaction to this was: Colorado Springs? Of course it was. There is a whole other breed of nutty in C.Springs.
Seems like the cops are damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
Maybe we should have some Libertarian cop free paradise. Is that the argument?
Some, even here at the FP, have that position. I prefer cops to be around, myself.
They are damned if they do. The contrast in demographics between when they do and when they don’t is what is being damned when they don’t.
And the knowledge that cops don’t, not because of prudence or moral scruples but because of the particular rules of cop culture. As is pointed out, black cops often behave exactly like white cops. Possibly most of the time, because of institutional expectations. Watch the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore on this score.
Obviously, there needs to be background checks before the sale or transfer of axes.
You have a 50-50 chance of outrunning a man with an axe. You’re never going to outrun a bullet.
That was a bit of snark.
The responses to US mass killings are depressingly predictable:
Short of banning all guns (which I personally think would be a good thing), how many of these mass killers would have failed the most stringent of background checks? (Little in the information released so far about the CS PP killer to suggest that he wouldn’t have passed.)
How, when, why would more mental health resources have prevented the CS PP killer from acting out his obsession? The Aurora theater killer was under the care of a psychiatrist. The Sandy Hook Elementary School killer was intermittently under the care of mental health care professionals. Plus, only a tiny percentage of people that suffer forms of mental illness ever become violent.
There seems not to have been any warning signs in the the four deaths and one suicide in this case. (Okay, purchasing a shotgun was out of character for the murderer, but the gun dealer wouldn’t have known that and his family was unlikely to have known that he made such a purchase.)
What we do know is that people that begin to lose touch with reality (just a tiny bit) and conventional societal norms are likely to develop irrational obsessions. The form of such obsessions are generally based in the here and now, the social and media milieu of the individual and perverted conventional societal norms (super skinny, large breasted, pumped up bodies). Obsessions with UFOs and ETs were prevalent during the post WWII period and today not so much. Generally, female obsessions are internalized and male obsessions are externalized and more amenable to violence.
Every freaking POS that preaches that women and their bodies are not entitled to be fully autonomous is responsible to some degree for the daily violence against women. When that preaching is specifically against the PP medical clinics, then of course these facilities will be attacked by someone, at or near 100% male, somewhere. Shame on the fetus-fanatic-fascists for inciting the obsessions that lead to this violence.
CBS News
Would add that the House GOP holding their despicable anti-PP hearings also need to be singled out.
Lemme see. Planned Parenthood has media salience again because Breitbart.com linked a false-construction propaganda video (their niche) that gave the impression that Planned Parenthood trafficked in baby parts.
The GOP uses the right-wing outrage over that to try to shut down the government and embarrass President Obama but has not yet succeeded. Which must frustrate the hell out of Cruz, Ryan, and McConnell in that order.
In the debates, Carly Fiorina ups the ante by claiming to have seen a scene of baby butchery that not even Breitbart dared mock up in their video. She is insistent on its existence despite much pushback, some even from within the GOP. Inflammatory political statements to motivate voters are still inflammatory and can motivate other responses.
Black Mountain is in the orbit of the Baptist Ridgecrest campground and the Billy Graham empire. Swannanoa is a suburb of Asheville. The two things the media seize on is that the perpetrator is in some sort of extended midlife crisis, and he likes guns.
The perpetrator travels from Black Mountain/Swannanoa to Colorado Springs, the Vatican of the pro-life movement. Why? Isn’t that like some European muslim teenager buying a ticket to Istanbul with the intent to go to Raqaa?
Who did he see while in Colorado Springs? What did he do prior to attacking the Planned Parenthood clinic? Have there been any investigations or stories? Can we rely on the Colorado Springs police to do this sort of shoeleather investigation?
There is a phrase used to describe how “lone wolf” terrorism incidents occur so as to be a convenient mix of control and plausible deniability. That phrase is “stochastic terrorism”. The set-up is determinative in that it increases the probability that some self-initializing activists will come forth from some unknown quarter and carry out the implicit terrorist act suggested by the set-up, often with minimal to no guidance. Operation Rescue has been very successful in shutting down abortion clinics this way while preserving their “univolvement” despite having a hard-line “murder the docs” position.
Finally, what is being talked about more than the stochastic terrorism aspects of this incident is the discrimination (in this case the privilege of whiteness) in the way white terrorists are treated in comparison to black shoplifters or even white teen dopers at a fast food joint. Dyllan Roof is handled politely and fed a hamburger; this guy kills a cop and is not killed in a hail of more than 30 bullets from multiple police weapons.
There are certainly enough dull axes to be sharpened there.
Will the GOP walk back their rhetoric after this? Will Fiorina come clean of not having seen what she claimed in the Breitbart video? Will any in the GOP fess up that the Breitbart hit job was a lie from the beginning? Will the various ministries in Colarado Springs admit that their rhetoric is part of why abortion clinics have been bombed, and ob/gyn doctors murdered? Will anyone realize that the pro-life movement for all of its closure of safe and legal routes to abortion has not measurably reduced the number of abortions in the US and is putting women in the same dangers that existed in the 1950s and early 1960s that brought the push for Roe v. Wade in the first place? And will anyone comment of the strange role of men and the types of men who are most violently (literally) opposed to abortion and ask what’s going on there?
Will this country ever have a honest, nuanced, complicated, and effective conversation about abortion?
The answer to your questions?
* crickets *
Too early for anything but crickets today.
Another question will Deleiden understand exactly how his falsified video that tread carefully but dogwhistled “baby parts” triggered the events that ended in this self-appointed soldier of whatever shooting up a Planned Parenthood clinic?
Deleiden might have been going for emotionally motivated GOP votes, but did he once consider how this could play out, especially if the GOP amplified his
liegross untruth?Looks as if she’s doubling down. Carly Fiorina Calls Planned Parenthood Shooter a ‘Protester,’ Decries ‘Left-Wing Tactics’ Too dumb to recognize that it’s now a losing hand.
It’s not a losing hand in the GOP primary. Trump lauded the enthusiasm of his supporters when they beat aman to death for being Mexican. Didn’t slow him down an eyelash.
This is The Fiorina Moment, when she shows whether or not she has what it take to be our Fuhrer. And she’s grabbing it.
I sense is that the CS PP shootout has shifted public opinion and it’s moving away from the anti-PP, lying scumbags. (Note: I’ve totally disagreed with others that expected Trump’s support to drop with any of the half dozen really nutso things he’s said.) Not among the hard-core religious crazies and misogynistic fascists, but among the general electorate, they are only about 20%. Even in that group that won’t get exercised about the killing of a physician that performs abortions, they dislike cop killers.
Women and whoever accompanies them should not have to fear for their lives when accessing health care, regardless if that care includes an abortion. Just as in the Schiavo situation, ordinary people can see through to that recognition.
Terrorism is a mental health issue? OK, I’m in. Same goes for ISIS.
Except neither are going to be self-reporting to mental health clinics.
T. Bogg unwinds.
T. Bogg: Domestic terrorism and the evil that men do
I think Josh Marshall was right to ascribe “malign hesitation”.