The latest in the game of conservatives pretending it’s they, and not the people who got shot, who are the real victims of the Arizona shooting is Trent Humphries, the leader of the Tucson Tea Party. After rolling out the usual whine about how being told not to be a paranoid, violent nutbar is oppression beyond any suffered in human history, he then blamed Giffords herself for what happened to her:
“It’s political gamesmanship,” he told the Guardian. “The real case is that she [Giffords] had no security whatsoever at this event. So if she lived under a constant fear of being targeted, if she lived under this constant fear of this rhetoric and hatred that was seething, why would she attend an event in full view of the public with no security whatsoever?”
This is such a telling comment, beyond the usual wankery, responsibility evasion, and willingness to do whatever it takes to keep escalating the paranoid crankery. For all the skreeing about “political gamemanship”, Humphries is all too willing to use this to demand further dismantling of our peaceful democracy. After all, he’s basically asking to live in a country where our politicians have to hire
mercenaries
private security firms in order to go around.
This is the height of authoritarian wankery, and anti-democratic. Joe Miller hired private security, like the tyrannical “libertarian” wanker he is, and the result was that they manhandled a journalist who had done nothing wrong. Having a bunch of thugs that work outside the law hanging out at what are supposed to be political events sends a signal of intimidation and censorship, and it also undermines the rule of law, because as the Miller incident shows, these guys work outside the law. Often, they make it up as they go along, in direct violation of existing laws.
One of the reasons I’m still proud of America is we’re not a country (yet) where our elected representatives carry on like they’re minor dictators, but instead have to deal with the public as actual public servants. I’m not surprised, however, to find that teabaggers are exploiting this situation to move us into a more authoritarian, less free, less democratic direction.
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One of the reasons I’m still proud of America is we’re not a country (yet) where our elected representatives carry on like they’re minor dictators, but instead have to deal with the public as actual public servants.
Really?
Possibly they’ve delegated the overt “acting like minor dictators” role to the police forces…