Rightwingers Go Insane Over VT Shooting
Title
Rightwingers Go Insane Over VT Shooting
Description
Thursday, April 26, 2007
<span style="font-weight: bold;">The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website <a href="http://robertlindsay.blogspot.com/2007/03/katrina-death-toll-passes-4000.html">here</a>.</span>
Have any fellow Lefties noticed that the Blogosphere seems to be a disgusting, rightwing place? Have you noticed that it seems like rightwing blogs are far overrepresented in terms of the percentage of rightwingers in society, and leftwing and centrist blogs seem to be less common?
I do not know what the answer is, but it may have something to do with how organized the rightwing is in this country and how unorganized the Left and even the Center are. The whole newspaper, newsmagazine, TV news and radio news industry in the US is tilted towards the Right. The Left is broke or lack voices in a corporatized media.
Anyway, seems the VT shooting case has been most taken up by rightwing bloggers. Why is that? Doesn't the Left have anything to say about this?
But a look at the rightwing blogs and their take on this shooting is instructive. For one thing, the entire rightwing blogosphere is in hyper-defensive screech mode regarding gun control.
That's the only significant noise I hear out of the US media, bloggers or otherwise, these days on gun control and VT: <span style="font-weight: bold;"> Well, despite this shooting, we sure as Hell don't need gun control, now do we?</span> The cries for more gun control are few and far between. What a strange way to react to a mass shooting.
One wonders how many more mass shootings it will take before Americans come to their senses about gun control, if ever. The reaction of the foreign press is instructive: Most foreign outlets, from India to Britain, are flabbergasted at how easy it is to buy a gun in the US.
They treat Americans like a bunch of insane aliens and our society as sick and depraved. On that level, they are correct. Do we Americans deserve what we get? We love our guns, we react furiously to any attempts to control them, and consequently we put up with appalling amounts of gun crime and regular mass shootings. Are we asking for it?
Just as I suspected, a <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/20/virginiatechshooting/main2712826.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_2712826">poll</a> showed no change in Americans' attitudes about gun control. The public is pretty much split down the middle on this issue, with 49% supporting no change or loosening of gun laws and 47% supporting increased restrictions.
60% of women support tightening gun laws, while only 35% of men do. 55% of minorities support tougher laws, while only 44% of Whites do. Urban dwellers support tougher laws, while suburban and rural residents (read: Whites) do not. 60% of Democrats support tougher gun laws, while only 35% of Republicans do.
What is truly insane about these statistics is that the populations that are least affected by gun violence are the most vociferous in favor of guns, usually on the basis that they are terrified of crime.
Republican White suburban and rural males are the strongest gun supporters, yet they are the least likely males to be affected. Same with Republican White suburban and rural women. The more gun violence a population experiences, the more they are in favor of restrictions. The less gun violence an area experiences, the more strongly they want their guns.
I'm sure there is a psychological explanation for this somewhere, but I wish someone would show it to me.
The political class is terrified of the issue, including both the Republican and Democratic Parties. Democratic Party operatives <a href="http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=618542007">blame</a> the party's pro-gun control stance to the party's losses in the 1994 elections and Al Gore's win, which the Supreme Court turned into a loss, in 2000.
For those who doubt that the US has an insane gun homicide rate, check out this statistic: America has a higher gun homicide rate amongst kids age 5-14 than in the top 25 other industrialized countries combined. Now tell me that statistic is caused by "too few guns" or has nothing to do with America being a gun-flooded society.
To show you just how deranged the US rightwing is, look at the coverage of the VT shooting. What was it focused on? Stupid liberals allowed the shooting to happen <span style="font-weight: bold;">by refusing to arm all your students</span>! I kid you not.
<span style="font-style: italic;">Update: As of April 30, in light of this case, Virginia has <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/30/gun.virginia.tech.ap/">tightened up</a> its gun laws so that no one who has ever been involuntarily hospitalized for psychiatric reasons can buy a gun in the state. Cho slipped through a loophole in a previous law because he was treated as an outpatient, and, while evaluated, he was not committed. The loophole enabled him to make his gun purchases.
Predictably, <span style="font-style: italic;">Furious Seasons</span> is <a href="http://www.furiousseasons.com/archives/2007/05/05012007_media_madness.html">opposed</a> to the new regulations. This blog strongly supports gun control and thinks hardly anyone should be able to own a handgun, much less someone with a record of being hospitalized as a danger to yourself or others.</span>
Another common theme was the lunatic Right's insane Islamophobia and outright hatred for all Muslims. Although Cho surely is about as far from being a Muslim as anyone can get, the Rightwing has been utterly obsessed, to the point of near-psychosis, with the notion that Cho must have been a Muslim terrorist! Evidence? Well, that Ismail Ax thing written on his arm. That proves he's Al Qaeda, right?
They have been digging up statistics showing that a whole 50 South Koreans are studying Islam at madrassas and that Islam is the fastest growing religion in (largely nonreligious) South Korea (a dubious statistic). All this proves that Cho is...a South Korean Muslim terrorist Al Qaeda!
What about Emily Hilscher, his first victim? Name sounds kinda...Jewish, huh? Bingo! Al Qaeda Muslim terrorist! He nailed a Jew first thing. None other than "Drudge" came up with that bit of insanity.
What about that Saudi reporter who shot the video camera footage of the shots outside Norris Hall? Investigate the Arab bastard! He was obviously in on it!
Not to mention, Arabia being evil enough, that his name is Bargouti, and he is really one of those evil Palestinian non-peoples; in fact, he is related to a prominent Palestinian family and one of his relatives is a dirty Pallie terrorist! Investigate the Arab-PLO-Saudi-South Korean Al Qaeda connection right now!
When people talk about Islamophobia or hatred of Arabs, I tend to roll my eyes. There is certainly a lot to criticize about Arab culture and Islam period, actually existing and historical versions. But the Rightwing's hatred for Arabs and Islam is simply pathological and insane, and nothing proves it more than the VT shooting.
How bout some other angles. I would have thought pulling an anti-immigrant angle out of this would be too low, but a number of rightwingers found reason to call for an end to immigration. Why? One guy, who immigrated 15 years ago, went nuts and killed some people. Let's lock down the borders!
We all know the Rightwing is racist, no matter how much they insist that they are not. What I didn't know is that they hate Asians too. But of course they do. When they weren't examining the hidden Cho-Al Qaeda link, they were plumbing the depths of something called "South Korean supremacism".
Does it even exist? Turns out a lot of South Koreans don't like Americans too much. Consequently, Cho being an anti-American South Korean Leftist radical and all that, this inscrutable Asian supremacism combined with Commie America-hatred surely spurred this mad spree.
You would think this is the lunatic Right, but no, what we are talking about is the solid 30% of population or so that continues to support George Bush and everything dumb he has ever done to the hilt. The "normal" Right and the insane Right in the US are equivalent. That's almost as scary as Mr. Cho.
Examples? Look at the comment threads on <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://hotair.com/">Hot Air</a></span>, the huge rightwing blog, <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2007/04/17/new-vtech-thread-victims-roommate-debunks-the-jilted-lover-theory/">here</a>, <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2007/04/18/new-vtech-thread-was-cho-schizophrenic-mean-or-both/">here</a> and <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2007/04/19/new-vtech-thread-the-telegraph-fills-in-the-timeline-maybe/">here</a>. Check out the comment thread on the big rightwing blog <a href="http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2007/04/getting_inside_.html">Riehl World View</a>. Don't even bother with the comments - check the actual <a href="http://lordofswans.blogspot.com/2007/04/virginia-tech-blog-3208229018.html">post</a> itself on the loony <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://lordofswans.blogspot.com/">Lord of Swans</a></span> blog. That's pretty representative, but if you look around you find that insanity reproduced all over the rightwing blogosphere.
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Note: Readers should carefully read the <a href="http://robertlindsay.blogspot.com/2005/03/rules-on-commenting.html">Commenting Rules</a> before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.</span>
posted by Robert Lindsay at <a href="http://robertlindsay.blogspot.com/2007/04/rightwingers-go-insane-over-vt-shooting.html" title="permanent link">4/26/2007 06:00:00 PM</a>
--
Original Source: <a href="http://robertlindsay.blogspot.com/2007/04/rightwingers-go-insane-over-vt-shooting.html">http://robertlindsay.blogspot.com/2007/04/rightwingers-go-insane-over-vt-shooting.html</a>
Licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License</a>.
<span style="font-weight: bold;">The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website <a href="http://robertlindsay.blogspot.com/2007/03/katrina-death-toll-passes-4000.html">here</a>.</span>
Have any fellow Lefties noticed that the Blogosphere seems to be a disgusting, rightwing place? Have you noticed that it seems like rightwing blogs are far overrepresented in terms of the percentage of rightwingers in society, and leftwing and centrist blogs seem to be less common?
I do not know what the answer is, but it may have something to do with how organized the rightwing is in this country and how unorganized the Left and even the Center are. The whole newspaper, newsmagazine, TV news and radio news industry in the US is tilted towards the Right. The Left is broke or lack voices in a corporatized media.
Anyway, seems the VT shooting case has been most taken up by rightwing bloggers. Why is that? Doesn't the Left have anything to say about this?
But a look at the rightwing blogs and their take on this shooting is instructive. For one thing, the entire rightwing blogosphere is in hyper-defensive screech mode regarding gun control.
That's the only significant noise I hear out of the US media, bloggers or otherwise, these days on gun control and VT: <span style="font-weight: bold;"> Well, despite this shooting, we sure as Hell don't need gun control, now do we?</span> The cries for more gun control are few and far between. What a strange way to react to a mass shooting.
One wonders how many more mass shootings it will take before Americans come to their senses about gun control, if ever. The reaction of the foreign press is instructive: Most foreign outlets, from India to Britain, are flabbergasted at how easy it is to buy a gun in the US.
They treat Americans like a bunch of insane aliens and our society as sick and depraved. On that level, they are correct. Do we Americans deserve what we get? We love our guns, we react furiously to any attempts to control them, and consequently we put up with appalling amounts of gun crime and regular mass shootings. Are we asking for it?
Just as I suspected, a <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/20/virginiatechshooting/main2712826.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_2712826">poll</a> showed no change in Americans' attitudes about gun control. The public is pretty much split down the middle on this issue, with 49% supporting no change or loosening of gun laws and 47% supporting increased restrictions.
60% of women support tightening gun laws, while only 35% of men do. 55% of minorities support tougher laws, while only 44% of Whites do. Urban dwellers support tougher laws, while suburban and rural residents (read: Whites) do not. 60% of Democrats support tougher gun laws, while only 35% of Republicans do.
What is truly insane about these statistics is that the populations that are least affected by gun violence are the most vociferous in favor of guns, usually on the basis that they are terrified of crime.
Republican White suburban and rural males are the strongest gun supporters, yet they are the least likely males to be affected. Same with Republican White suburban and rural women. The more gun violence a population experiences, the more they are in favor of restrictions. The less gun violence an area experiences, the more strongly they want their guns.
I'm sure there is a psychological explanation for this somewhere, but I wish someone would show it to me.
The political class is terrified of the issue, including both the Republican and Democratic Parties. Democratic Party operatives <a href="http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=618542007">blame</a> the party's pro-gun control stance to the party's losses in the 1994 elections and Al Gore's win, which the Supreme Court turned into a loss, in 2000.
For those who doubt that the US has an insane gun homicide rate, check out this statistic: America has a higher gun homicide rate amongst kids age 5-14 than in the top 25 other industrialized countries combined. Now tell me that statistic is caused by "too few guns" or has nothing to do with America being a gun-flooded society.
To show you just how deranged the US rightwing is, look at the coverage of the VT shooting. What was it focused on? Stupid liberals allowed the shooting to happen <span style="font-weight: bold;">by refusing to arm all your students</span>! I kid you not.
<span style="font-style: italic;">Update: As of April 30, in light of this case, Virginia has <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/30/gun.virginia.tech.ap/">tightened up</a> its gun laws so that no one who has ever been involuntarily hospitalized for psychiatric reasons can buy a gun in the state. Cho slipped through a loophole in a previous law because he was treated as an outpatient, and, while evaluated, he was not committed. The loophole enabled him to make his gun purchases.
Predictably, <span style="font-style: italic;">Furious Seasons</span> is <a href="http://www.furiousseasons.com/archives/2007/05/05012007_media_madness.html">opposed</a> to the new regulations. This blog strongly supports gun control and thinks hardly anyone should be able to own a handgun, much less someone with a record of being hospitalized as a danger to yourself or others.</span>
Another common theme was the lunatic Right's insane Islamophobia and outright hatred for all Muslims. Although Cho surely is about as far from being a Muslim as anyone can get, the Rightwing has been utterly obsessed, to the point of near-psychosis, with the notion that Cho must have been a Muslim terrorist! Evidence? Well, that Ismail Ax thing written on his arm. That proves he's Al Qaeda, right?
They have been digging up statistics showing that a whole 50 South Koreans are studying Islam at madrassas and that Islam is the fastest growing religion in (largely nonreligious) South Korea (a dubious statistic). All this proves that Cho is...a South Korean Muslim terrorist Al Qaeda!
What about Emily Hilscher, his first victim? Name sounds kinda...Jewish, huh? Bingo! Al Qaeda Muslim terrorist! He nailed a Jew first thing. None other than "Drudge" came up with that bit of insanity.
What about that Saudi reporter who shot the video camera footage of the shots outside Norris Hall? Investigate the Arab bastard! He was obviously in on it!
Not to mention, Arabia being evil enough, that his name is Bargouti, and he is really one of those evil Palestinian non-peoples; in fact, he is related to a prominent Palestinian family and one of his relatives is a dirty Pallie terrorist! Investigate the Arab-PLO-Saudi-South Korean Al Qaeda connection right now!
When people talk about Islamophobia or hatred of Arabs, I tend to roll my eyes. There is certainly a lot to criticize about Arab culture and Islam period, actually existing and historical versions. But the Rightwing's hatred for Arabs and Islam is simply pathological and insane, and nothing proves it more than the VT shooting.
How bout some other angles. I would have thought pulling an anti-immigrant angle out of this would be too low, but a number of rightwingers found reason to call for an end to immigration. Why? One guy, who immigrated 15 years ago, went nuts and killed some people. Let's lock down the borders!
We all know the Rightwing is racist, no matter how much they insist that they are not. What I didn't know is that they hate Asians too. But of course they do. When they weren't examining the hidden Cho-Al Qaeda link, they were plumbing the depths of something called "South Korean supremacism".
Does it even exist? Turns out a lot of South Koreans don't like Americans too much. Consequently, Cho being an anti-American South Korean Leftist radical and all that, this inscrutable Asian supremacism combined with Commie America-hatred surely spurred this mad spree.
You would think this is the lunatic Right, but no, what we are talking about is the solid 30% of population or so that continues to support George Bush and everything dumb he has ever done to the hilt. The "normal" Right and the insane Right in the US are equivalent. That's almost as scary as Mr. Cho.
Examples? Look at the comment threads on <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://hotair.com/">Hot Air</a></span>, the huge rightwing blog, <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2007/04/17/new-vtech-thread-victims-roommate-debunks-the-jilted-lover-theory/">here</a>, <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2007/04/18/new-vtech-thread-was-cho-schizophrenic-mean-or-both/">here</a> and <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2007/04/19/new-vtech-thread-the-telegraph-fills-in-the-timeline-maybe/">here</a>. Check out the comment thread on the big rightwing blog <a href="http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2007/04/getting_inside_.html">Riehl World View</a>. Don't even bother with the comments - check the actual <a href="http://lordofswans.blogspot.com/2007/04/virginia-tech-blog-3208229018.html">post</a> itself on the loony <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://lordofswans.blogspot.com/">Lord of Swans</a></span> blog. That's pretty representative, but if you look around you find that insanity reproduced all over the rightwing blogosphere.
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Note: Readers should carefully read the <a href="http://robertlindsay.blogspot.com/2005/03/rules-on-commenting.html">Commenting Rules</a> before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.</span>
posted by Robert Lindsay at <a href="http://robertlindsay.blogspot.com/2007/04/rightwingers-go-insane-over-vt-shooting.html" title="permanent link">4/26/2007 06:00:00 PM</a>
--
Original Source: <a href="http://robertlindsay.blogspot.com/2007/04/rightwingers-go-insane-over-vt-shooting.html">http://robertlindsay.blogspot.com/2007/04/rightwingers-go-insane-over-vt-shooting.html</a>
Licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License</a>.
Creator
Robert Lindsay
Date
2007-05-29
Contributor
Brent Jesiek
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5
Language
eng
Citation
Robert Lindsay, “Rightwingers Go Insane Over VT Shooting,” The April 16 Archive, accessed April 19, 2024, https://www.april16archive.org/items/show/300.