I have deliberately waited several days before commenting on the events last Friday in Tucson Arizona.  My reasons for waiting were manifestly simple; I wanted to have more information. The earliest reports are always the most sketchy and the least reliable. Eye witness testimony is notoriously untrustworthy. (Consider that for decades we though the RMS Titanic was one piece because eye-witness testimony said is did not break up and sink, but merely sank.)

So what can we say about the attempted assassination and the mass murder in Tucson. I can say that I think some people rushed to judgment way too quickly. Some on the right have rushed to insist “There is nothing political about it.” (Emphasis added.) I would counsel you that it is too early to be that certain. We do not know what information may turn up on the suspects computers or in other places. I think it was not really politically motivated, but note I used that qualifying word ‘think.’ I have also seen on the right some making hay out of books that appeared on the suspect’s web pages as favorite books. i.e. Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto. They usually fail to list that We The Living and Brave New World were also on this person reading list of favorite books, along with more traditional fare.  (We The Living was written by Ayn Rand, currently a darling of the Tea Party set, thought I think many in that set would be truly horrified by her entire philosophy.) So attempts to paint him as a socialists/liberal are at best really strained.

Mind you the rush to judgment has by far not been restrained to the conservative side of the isle. From some on the left there is such certainty that the harsh (and in my opinion often totally false) accusations against the liberals in the last two year more than just created a climate where this would occur, but practically compelled it. Reading some people you would expect that thought Sarah Palin called up the shooter herself and whispered over the telephone ‘Why don’t you pass the time with a little solitaire?’ I am no fan of Sarah Palin, but boys and girls she is not the center of the universe anbd her ‘crosshair’ graphics didn’t set the nutjob off to his shooting spree.

As I have heard more about the shooter and it history, particularly his history with the victim I really feel this was not something born out of the harsh, over the top, enemies of the state, propaganda than has passed a political discourse lately. (And I include the time frame of the Bush terms. Bush was not Hitler.) The hypocrisy  on both sides is what keeps me from having any respect for 90 percent of the politicians out there. Had a nut-job taken a shot at Bush like this the right would have cried ‘climate of hate’ and ‘assassination-chich’ and the left would be screaming ‘lone nut.’

That said, there are no random victims. Perps select their victims by criteria that matters to them. It may be dense or even incomprehensible to others, but there is a selection process. I am not an expert, and I do not have all the information even if I possessed the requisite knowledge, understand this sort of disturbed mind is not easy. However I think he selects Rep Giffords because if his encounter with her some years ago. She, in his eye, blew him off at a meeting, and that moment of irritation became the focus of his foul twisted hate.  She became his enemy and her supports by extension his enemies. He is, like many spree killers, (which is a different type of monster than the serial killer) trying to make himself matter. I think he is smiling in the mug shot because he has gotten what he wants, everyone talking about him as thought he were an important man. he is not. He is a sick person. Nothing more and not less than a terribly sick person.

You know who is an important person? Rep. Giffords. She did get threats. Her office was vandalized. She carried on. She served her country. As did Judge John Roll, though to my knowledge he did not have threats directed recently his way. They are patriots, as are the innocents who were cut down that day. This is the price of freedom. If I am free then others who may abuse that freedom are also free and it is the eternal dilemma of freedom that something like this can occur. If we are ever free of these sorts of horrific events, then we are not free in the greater sense of the word.