mythago

The real puzzler isn’t why Jared Loughner shot Congresswoman Giffords and a bunch of innocent bystanders. It’s why the politicians and demagogues who have encouraged violence are backing away from him.

Certainly, one would expect them to condemn the shooting of people other than Giffords, in much the same way that the military expresses regret when a strike on a military target kills innocent civilians. But why are they condemning his shooting of Giffords? Why aren’t they doing what politicians usually do when something they support comes to pass – rushing in to get a camera-op and claim all the credit, even when nothing they did actually cased the result?

From Sarah Palin’s crosshairs map and urging her supporters to “RELOAD” to Shannon Angle’s suggesting “Second Amendment remedies” to “take Harry Reid out” if she lost the election to Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck openly exhorting people to violence, reactionaries expressed their wish quite clearly, and they got it. Why are they now having second thoughts?

I can think of only two possibilities. Either they were so stupid and immature before (hurr, look how much this upsets the libruls) and never gave a moment’s thought to what would happen if, in fact, some disgruntled nutjob decided to put the “four boxes” into action, as if they were immature teenagers rhapsodizing about the “cool” violence in their favorite video-game shooter suddenly getting a look at real-life violence. If this is what’s going on – they were just so in love with their own imaginary tough-ass self that it didn’t occur to them for a second that, like, shooting at people just because you’re mad at then is bad – then they have no place in public discourse, and need to slither back under their rocks with the rest of the simple, muck-dwelling lifeforms, and leave political interaction to the humans.

The other possibility is that they’re pleased as punch that Giffords was shot; but they know that a lot of people who used to chuckle over their imaginary gun battles are really in group number one there. That is, it’s not a popular viewpoint to say “We deeply regret and condemn the killing of innocents, but as we said before this incident, if Congress continues as it has been, people are going to shoot Democrats, so take Giffords as a warning.” So instead of proudly standing behind a “crosshairs” political map or leaping into the photo-op to prattle about how right-thinking Americans will come out shooting if the wrong Senator gets elected, they trip over each other to pretend they probably never said any of that stuff and certainly never meant it.

Which is to say, they’re wormsucking cowards who care about nothing but their own political and financial futures, and are too craven to take the credit they’re owed. Unsurprising.