Call them what they are.

Conservatives.

Seriously, there’s no need to separate “conservative” from “right-wing”. They shouldn’t get to disavow the terms when it gets inconvenient for them, like when one of them goes on a killing spree in the name of their sick ideology.

Though obviously mentally ill, at least he’s being up front with his hatreds and his bigotry.  That’s a lot more than you can usually say about wingnuts…

I don’t oppose the death penalty because I think that some crimes merit it.  This is one of them.

damnedyankee, my opposition to the death penalty is based in the harm it does to us as a society, not because I don’t ever want to see someone dead. It’s been too clearly demonstrated that we can’t administer it fairly and without executing people innocent of the crimes they were convicted of.

And I recall our forty-third president chortling about Karla Faye Tucker’s pleas for clemency. I don’t ever want to be that guy.

I’ll agree that he oviously has some mental illness issues that need to be addressed, but what I don’t get is how Hannity, et al. get off the hook for this. Obviously, they yelled fire in this guys movie theater.

While I wouldn’t doubt that he may have some form of mental illness, I am curious as to why people are saying he obviously is mentally ill? His rant is fairly coherent in that it takes the ideas and words of the right to their logical conclusion.  Is it the fact that he takes them too literally?

http://www.google.com/s2/profiles/116880258349559594517

Literate, perhaps, but articulate?  Hitler was articulate, The Vatican is articulate, what I see here is blind repetition of conservative, religious right racist taglines.  Unfortunately the message they’re sending is simple enough for simple minds to get their panties in a twist and do stupid things.  Without getting their ‘base’ angry (pun intended) over silly things like LGTB rights, abortion and Muslims, what is the right really selling?

I think it’s nice that you’re polite enough to name the group with these views the “extreme right wing” .

Oops on the previous post, wrong stuff on the clipboard. =-(

I’m against the death penalty, but what a pity that he wasn’t able to carry out his stated intention of killing himself.

And I recall our forty-third president chortling about Karla Faye Tucker’s pleas for clemency. I don’t ever want to be that guy.

Certainly not, and that was the first time I actually recoiled from that bastard.  Sadly, many recoilings would follow, but I digress.

The power of life and death is inherently the most solemn responsibility we grant to the state, should we choose to do so.  I favor restrictions on it that would guarantee that it be used sparingly and judiciously (a requirement of a higher burden of proof than in other cases, for example).  But I also think that there are crimes that are sufficiently monstrous to merit the death penalty, acts of joyous cruelty that go beyond any hope of redemption.  People who commit such acts will always be a danger, and the existence of the death penalty means that these people can no longer pose a threat.

“While I wouldn’t doubt that he may have some form of mental illness, I am curious as to why people are saying he obviously is mentally ill?”

...um, because people who are convinced that some shadowy liberal conspiracy is ruining the world, and then take that as license to kill some people in a church are not sane?

“His rant is fairly coherent in that it takes the ideas and words of the right to their logical conclusion.  Is it the fact that he takes them too literally?”

Ted Kaczynski was coherent and took his ideas and words to a “logical” conclusion that justified him sending bombs to university professors in the mail.  But that didn’t make him sane…

damnedyankee, my opposition to the death penalty is based in the harm it does to us as a society, not because I don’t ever want to see someone dead. It’s been too clearly demonstrated that we can’t administer it fairly and without executing people innocent of the crimes they were convicted of.

Seconded, thank you for stating it so succinctly.

I doubt this guy will have any kind of shelf life in prison. He can write his screeds and maybe a few dozen people will read them, but he won’t be an underground celebrity, at least, in my opinion. He’s just too crazy.

BOR et. al. will cluck their tongues at the sadness of the incident and then use it to “prove” that liberals are killing America and it sends crazy people overboard and forces them to slaughter innocents in their impotent liberal-based rage.

Pennylane, I can’t speak for others, but I myself am calling him crazy because I think it’s insane to kill 100 “substitutes” for your real targets. A sane person would, I think, recognize that killing those 100 people wasn’t a worthwhile substitute, particularly when he had no way of knowing if they were even “low level” liberals.

Perhaps his saying “This is a hate crime” will stop the right-wing tongue-clucking about how we shouldn’t call it a hate crime.

Because surely the perpetrator is the best judge of this.

Then again, we’re talking about a group which includes Jonah “It’s Not Fair to Call Mussolini a Fascist!” Goldberg, so we’re not talking about people with great powers of rational cogitation.

Seriously, there’s no need to separate “conservative” from “right-wing”.

I think the right-wing libertarians need just as much shaming as the right-wing conservatives.

...um, because people who are convinced that some shadowy liberal conspiracy is ruining the world, and then take that as license to kill some people in a church are not sane?

If he met the legal definition of insanity, he’d be going to a institution for the criminally insane, not to prison.  It’s possible the man is clinically depressed or bi-polar but that does not make him insane.  He knew the difference between right and wrong when he walked into that church and coldly murdered two innocent people.

BOR et. al. will cluck their tongues at the sadness of the incident and then use it to “prove” that liberals are killing America and it sends crazy people overboard and forces them to slaughter innocents in their impotent liberal-based rage.

“See what you made me do?”  Brrrr.

I have no idea if he’s considered clinically/legally insane or not.  That is something for psychiatrists and lawyers to argue about.

I’m talking about the street meaning of insane: That guy is fuckin’ nuts!...

If you heard/read what he did and said to yourself, “that guy must be crazy”, then he’s practically insane, whether he’s clinically insane or not…

Let’s be fair to conservatives now.  Think of all the sociopathic killers who have justified their crimes with left wing ideology.

Let’s see there’s… uh…

um…

*crickets*

“Think of all the sociopathic killers who have justified their crimes with left wing ideology.”

...you might be able to describe Ted Kaczynski as a tree-hugging hippie, lefty, loon.

OTOH, in a world where Jonah Goldberg can call Hitler a liberal without ending his career, the words “left”, “right”, “liberal”, and “conservative” have obviously been drained of all meaning…

Let’s be fair to conservatives now.  Think of all the sociopathic killers who have justified their crimes with left wing ideology.

*crickets*

History.  Learn you some.  There have been plenty of left-wing mass killers, both lone individuals and groups.

Colin Ferguson of Long Island Railroad Massacre fame strikes me as a pretty close analogy to this assclown.

I’m against the death penalty, but what a pity that he wasn’t able to carry out his stated intention of killing himself.

I disagree—I’m much happier having him taken alive and explaining in public over and over again what led him to commit his crimes.  People are already recoiling from the right wing media, and this can only help.

If he met the legal definition of insanity, he’d be going to a institution for the criminally insane, not to prison.

Well, that’s part of the problem—legally insane and clinically insane are two completely different things.  You can be found to be clinically mentally ill but still responsible for your actions, ie legally sane.

Think of the Andrea Yates trial.  Here’s a woman who drowned all five of her children—children who, by all accounts, she loved very much—because she thought they were going to go to Hell if she didn’t.  She had a long history of schizophrenia, but as far as the state of Texas was concerned, she was legally sane and that’s the basis on which she was convicted.

I’m talking about the street meaning of insane: That guy is fuckin’ nuts!...

The street meaning is irrelevant; it is an expression of disapproval rather than a substantive statement.  “He killed people - he must be insane” simply says that the speaker is horrified.

He’s not criminally insane - he knew what he was doing was considered wrong.

I even douibt that he has any serious mental illness - the note suggests a realistic frustration and depression at his circumstances, combined with wholesale subscription to beliefs that a significant minority seem to spout apparently sincerely. He’s not even that paranoid - the threats he perceives are not assumed to be aimed at him specifically. He’s not psychotic.  He may be deluded, but it’s a delusion shared more or less with a large number of people. He doesn’t appear manic or disassociated.

From this limited evidence, he has a set of beliefs, and he set out to act willfully and rationally on them, ignoring social norms. He chose to kill people.  In a very real sense, there’s no difference between him and any other terrorist.

That doesn’t make him crazy.  That makes him evil.

(I have a friend in town who I need to call - she may need some help given this news)

Interesting how the puppetmasters and master dogwhistlers are trying to distance themselves from those whose actions they direct, but pretend to deplore with their clean hands.  We need to keep the heat on the talkjocks, preachers, and politicians who stoke this crap and then try to claim “but I didn’t light that fire”.

I guess there seems to me to be a difference between Andrea Yates being mentally ill and hearing voices someone who murders people based on a set of reasons that he has culled from other mainstream sources.  I guess it worries me that when people do awful things people say “mentally ill!” which is problematic for people with mental illness, most of whom will never do anything evil, and excuses the circumstances leading to the evil act.  As the post indicates, this was not a man who fabricated the left wing conspiracy out of paranoid fantasies.  He has been repeatedly told by numerous sources that these people want to destroy America.  And he struck out against it.  Sure, most of us would critically examine those claims, or if we believed it would come up with a more effective plan for achieving our ends, but that doesn’t make us more *sane.* 

I don’t think suicide bombers are mentally ill.  I don’t think Timothy McVeigh was mentally ill.  Unless that term means willing to do something the majority of us would not.  It just seems like we need a way to semantically distinguish between the mentally ill—ie, those suffering from chemical imbalances, etc.—and those who are profoundly anti-social or whatever. 

I guess I’m in part worried by the stigmatization of mental illness and in part worried that this exonerates the right-wingers who will say “it’s not OUR fault what the loonies do, just because we’ve been telling them for years that all their problems have been caused by THESE specific people.”

“There have been plenty of left-wing mass killers, both lone individuals and groups.”
One racist thug does not equal plenty. And “left-wing?” Nope.
You wouldn’t be “anon” from Orcinus, who tried the same stupid equivalence argument there, would you?

I don’t think suicide bombers are mentally ill.  I don’t think Timothy McVeigh was mentally ill.  Unless that term means willing to do something the majority of us would not.  It just seems like we need a way to semantically distinguish between the mentally ill—ie, those suffering from chemical imbalances, etc.—and those who are profoundly anti-social or whatever.

Absolutely. Not everyone who commits a crime is insane. Not only is this delusion dangerous to those with mental illness, it indicates to me a refusal to look at these people’s motivations squarely. The guy may have mental issues, or maybe not. From what I’ve read, I would tend to believe not. He’s a guy who hates liberals and thinks liberalism is a disease on society. Given these premises, what Adkisson did is completely rational and logical. He partially achieved his stated objectives.

But Viceroy Matt, BILL AYERS BILL AYERS BILL AYERS!

Funny how they have to reach that far back for an example, when some gay hater seems to do something atrocious on a monthly if not weekly basis.

I don’t buy for one second that this guy’s “mentally ill”.  Not one.

He knew what he was doing.  He knew, he knew and did it anyway.  He’s responsible, he should be locked away, and the people who encourage this kind of fucking disgusting, hate-fueled, cold-blooded terrorism, and yes, that’s what it is, need to be locked away with him.  They’re a “clear and present danger”, and that’s that.

Conservatism is a danger to humanity as a whole.  This guy is just another example of what it’s allowed to do in an environment where they control the media and aren’t challenged.

But Viceroy Matt, BILL AYERS BILL AYERS BILL AYERS!

I had some fun with that, last year.

You wouldn’t be “anon” from Orcinus, who tried the same stupid equivalence argument there, would you?

Nah, JP is a regular around here.  And s/he is right; we lefties have had a few ideological killers in our ranks - mostly dumb kids setting bombs in the Sixties.

That said, you are also right - there’s nothing remotely close to equivalence between the two.  Timothy McVeigh alone killed more than all the violent lefties in U.S. history put together, and they’ve had a virtual lock on the domestic terrorism profession for decades.

He’s mentally ill in the same way Hannibal Lecter would be if he were a real character.

Being smart, and developing elaborate explanations for why you want to do something crazy does not mean you’re okay.

I’m not arguing that he should be excused from responsibility for his actions under an “insanity” defense.  If he did it, he should pay the consequences.  But that does not mean he’s not ill.

“The guy may have mental issues, or maybe not. From what I’ve read, I would tend to believe not. He’s a guy who hates liberals and thinks liberalism is a disease on society.”

Not knowing the difference between: an act Rush Limbaugh puts on to stir up the rubes and get rich; or acting on a sincere but irrational belief “liberals” must be destroyed for the good of mankind;  That’s a night and day difference.

And a person who can’t see that difference is mentally ill pretty much regardless of what they claim their “reasoning” is…

BTW, puppetmaster and hatemonger Michael Graham was arrested when he ran a red light and got nailed for driving with a revoked license.

Of course he blames the Registrar of Motor Vehicles for this, not his sorry ass self.  Personal responsibility is for those “other” people, eh?

Not knowing the difference between: an act Rush Limbaugh puts on to stir up the rubes and get rich; or acting on a sincere but irrational belief “liberals” must be destroyed for the good of mankind; That’s a night and day difference.

But what if in his worldpicture it makes perfect sense. He sees liberalism as a cancer upon humankind. Perhaps liberals really will eradicate that which he considers good in society. I guess he’s probably deluded. But I don’t know his reasons. I haven’t read his manifesto.

“Absolutely. Not everyone who commits a crime is insane.”

But people will call them “crazy” and say that they are “Obviously mentally ill” when the crime is so heinous that it makes you think “no sane person would do that!”

Yes.  And deluded is not the same as insane.  He is hardly the first person to kill for mistaken beliefs.  And I think it gives far too much power to Rush Limbaugh to say that he somehow has this incredible power to manipulate the masses for cash.  He taps into a lot of cultural angst but he is not a puppetmaster. 

I guess it bothers me in the way that people who say that, for instance, all rapists must be psychopaths.  No, they’re regular people capable of horrible things because they live in a rape culture, because they lack empathy, because they’re misogynist, etc.

But people will call them “crazy” and say that they are “Obviously mentally ill” when the crime is so heinous that it makes you think “no sane person would do that!”

Yeah, see that’s a problem.  It individualizes acts such as this by blaming a flaw in the individual rather than in the broader context.

Thanks, guys. It’s the false equivalence that always gets my BP up.

But what if in his worldpicture it makes perfect sense. He sees liberalism as a cancer upon humankind. Perhaps liberals really will eradicate that which he considers good in society.

The guy who tried to kidnap Elie Wiesel in San Francisco sincerely believed that the Holocaust was all an elaborate hoax and that Wiesel would admit it if he was confronted.

Why did he believe this?  Because he spent a lot of time on denial websites reading all of the “evidence” and denunciations of Wiesel and other vocal Holocaust survivors.  But he was one of the few who actually got up and did something about it.

That’s really where the disconnect is.  What is it about human nature that 1000 people can listen to a steady diet of Rush Limbaugh and only 1 of them will take some bad action?  It’s drilled into us from a young age that killing people is bad, so what’s different about the people who can overcome that indoctrination?  McVeigh is easy—the entire army is set up to overcome your reluctance to kill other people—but what about otherwise “ordinary” people?

“And I think it gives far too much power to Rush Limbaugh to say that he somehow has this incredible power to manipulate the masses for cash.  He taps into a lot of cultural angst but he is not a puppetmaster.”

...while Limbaugh is no Jim Jones by any stretch, it’s naive to believe he doesn’t wield a great deal of power in our society.  It’s wrong, it’s underserved, and it makes me ill, but it’s nevertheless true.  And other than being worshipped by a bunch of inbred wingnuts, he reason he does it is to get the cash…

I admit that I don’t have a good logical argument for this now but nevertheless I repeat my initual statement: automatically calling your enemies ‘crazy’ seems sometimes like a way to avoid examining their motivations squarely. If that’s what we’re doing, I don’t think we should.

And other than being worshipped by a bunch of inbred wingnuts, he reason he does it is to get the cash…

But what if Limbaugh actually belives much of the evil retarded shit he spews? Seems to me like few people examine this possibility.

I agree with atheist.  And I think we have to examine the reasons why people believe him other than just “they’re inbred” or “they’re crazy.”  There’s something fundamentally different between a woman who drowns her own children because she has hallucinations and a guy who lives on a diet of this shit and believes it.

If Limbaugh actually believes his own shit, and only his therapist knows, he’s as mentally ill as the shooter…

***

BTW, for me, calling him (the shooter) crazy is not a reason not to ignore the basis for his illness.  It’s actually a good reason to undersand it even better so we can prevent future evil if possible, or treat it once somebody heads in that direction…

“There’s something fundamentally different between a woman who drowns her own children because she has hallucinations and a guy who lives on a diet of this shit and believes it.”

Other than the woman being even crazier than him, I guess I don’t see as much difference as you do…

Here’s the thing, I take a pill that fixes the chemical in my brain that prevents me from having irrational thoughts and enables me to get through life.

Do you really think that people who believe right wing ideology just need a little pill to make their synapses fire properly?

It’s not just Limbaugh, after all. There’s a host of right-wing mouthpieces churning out the same memes. You could easily just listen to only those shows, read only those websites and books. They’ve been on point for nearly twenty years dedicated to the message that liberals are evil. Plenty of people don’t understand the layers of the right-wing media and probably think they’re listening to American Heroes Unafraid to Speak the Truth or some shit. It’s not surprising at all that someone would take the next step in the message.

The difference between the people who listen to Limbaugh and just nod and the ones who listen and go out and attack people isn’t the difference between crazy and not-crazy, it’s just the difference between lurkers and posters. Or, more to the point, between the relatively few terrorists in any violent movement and those who simply enable them.

I think we misuse the term “crazy” when we apply it to killers like this, because although they are pretty clearly mentally ill, so are thousands of other people (some of whom may have killed even more, just at a remove or two) who never get labelled that way. Most republican members of congress: crazy. Pat Robertson: crazy. John Thain: crazy. Stewart Parnell: crazy. But when you’re rich and crazy you’re not even eccentric any more. You’re charismatic. Or driven. Or abrasive. Or a risk-taker…

Regarding the link posted by anonymic, who is John Horsey? I googled him and came up with nothing.

But what if Limbaugh actually belives much of the evil retarded shit he spews? Seems to me like few people examine this possibility.

I’ve seen it happen.  About 15 years ago, I was dealing with a Holocaust denier.  Initially he was clearly somewhat antisemitic, but wasn’t that strong on the denier part.  You could tell he was throwing things out that he was just parroting.  In retrospect, looking at his early Usenet postings, you don’t get the idea he was fully into it or entirely believed it.

However, as he kept repeating it, he started to really, really, believe it.  And what he wrote started to get more and more outrageous, as he convinced himself that what he was saying was actually true.  He became more blatantly racist and antisemitic, began arguing much more strongly as a denier.  By the end, there was no question he completely believed his own lies and delusions.

That’s why I tend to be skeptical when people go on about how Limbaugh and Coulter and the like are just entertainers.  You know that Colbert is playing a role because he’s quite open that he’s not like his fictional character and doesn’t play him 24 hours a day, and doesn’t defend his fictional views.  Limbaugh and coulter though, if they are playing characters, they’ve been playing them 24/7/365, defending what they say and doing it seriously.  Even if they didn’t start out entirely believing it, by investing entirely in the character, especially if they believed it a bit, they can’t help but start to.

KeithM, exactly. I don’t doubt but that lots of things said by Limbaugh and other right-wing media stars are said cynically. But it seems to me unlikely that it’s all cynicism and lies.

And, as you have described so well, it is completely possible for people’s minds to flow from cynicism to belief and back again, fluidly, over time. I’ve seen it happen with myself, in my life. What we believe is always affected by our life situation. And it affects our life situation back, sometimes creating chaotic feedback.

I also wish that liberals/leftists would do more head-on examination of people like Limbaugh. It seems to me that our tendency to ascribe nothing but hypocritical cynicism to them is really a side effect of our own worldview coloring our efforts to understand them. If I was acting the way Limbaugh does, spewing crazy shit on the radio to his audience, I would be doing it as a cynical ploy to get money & fame. But—here’s the thing—I’m not Limbaugh. I think his world-picture may be quite different from mine.

Do you really think that people who believe right wing ideology just need a little pill to make their synapses fire properly?

Even those of us whose synapses don’t fire properly can’t just pop a pill and be all better.  At least, I can’t—I need therapy, too, to have someone check my perceptions and point out that maybe the depression is leading me down some self-destructive paths.

As I said, the problem isn’t necessarily what these people believe.  It’s what they do.  What is it that makes one person act out when thousands of others who are saturated with the same viewpoints don’t?

I’m glad he didn’t have the luxury of dying. Instead, he can live out the rest of his pathetic, worthless life in a cage – where he belongs.

And I disagree with the vast majority of people here who link this atrocity unequivocally with conservatism. Adkisson didn’t do this because he’s a conservative. He didn’t do this because of some mental illness. He did this because he’s a pathetic asshole who, when he could never get the fame he likely craved, decided to settle for infamy instead.

Killing is an easy way to achieve that goal. It’s the laziest and cruelest way to leave a mark – the last stand of the life-long loser who seethes with outsider-frustration when the rest of the world fails to recognize his “genius.”

I hope he lives a long, long life – completely healthy ‘til the day he dies at the ripe old age of 120. And the whole time he’s pacing that cell, I hope the world just keeps getting more and more liberal. I hope the last thing he hears in this life is someone singing kumbaya.

Fucker.

Someone should make a tape repeating this and put it on an endless loop to play in his cell, “You were stopped by unarmed liberals.  Unarmed liberals are braver and tougher than you’ll ever be.  You are a total loser.”

I’d like to build a statue of Greg McKendry and put it right outside Adkisson’s window where he’d have to look at it every single day and know that the man he killed was a better and braver man than he is in every way.

Humans have a tendency to brand those who do crimes horrific to us as crazy mostly as a coping mechanism.  We want to believe that there is some sort of barrier between us and them, that there must be something inherently wrong with them that isn’t wrong with us.  In actuality, this man was not insane and the only barrier between him and us are our mores (and his political ideology).  We choose not to kill mostly because we either prefer the rights of freedom to the consequences of the crime or because we do not have what we feel is a valid reason to kill.  I would be the first to say that, in the event I felt threatened, I could choose to kill.  Consider a popular ethical scenario as well: if you could go back in time and stop Hitler’s final solution by killing him, would you?  I imagine that many of us would feel the consequences to our bodies and our mores would be worth it.  Jim Adkisson felt he was doing his best to protect the country from dire consequences and I feel a sadness and a pity for him.  However, I also understand that I could be act as he did in the same circumstances.

Don’t take this as a justification for violence: it’s not.  I just believe that facing the monster in all of us helps us keep him under control.