Sunday, April 05, 2009

With great power comes great ... wait, how does that end again?


Via John at Americablog, we learn the hard way what happens when right-wing crazies get to spew the same, hate-filled lies over the airwaves year after year: Cops die.

A gunman wearing a bulletproof vest and "lying in wait" opened fire on officers responding to a domestic disturbance call Saturday, killing three of them and turning a quiet Pittsburgh street into a battlefield, police said.

Police Chief Nate Harper said the motive for the shooting isn't clear, but friends said the gunman recently had been upset about losing his job and feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns....

Poplawski had feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon," said Edward Perkovic, his best friend....

Another longtime friend, Aaron Vire, said Poplawski feared that President Barack Obama was going to take away his rights, though he said he "wasn't violently against Obama."

So, to recap, you relentlessly demonize Barack Obama as someone who is going to strip you of your right to bear arms, and you pound home that lie, month after month, until someone who's depressed and possibly not quite right in the head finally takes it seriously and decides that the only way to deal with it is to kill three police officers. Which inspires the obvious questions:

Which of Canada's "free speech warrior" Blogging Tories are going to raise even the mildest objection to this? Which of Canada's shrieky wanks might be bold enough to suggest that, perhaps, just perhaps, there's a limit to what kind of inflammatory lies should be allowed to permeate the radio waves, particularly when those lies end up killing three cops? And, most importantly, will Blogging Tory "Neo Conservative" make fun of three dead law enforcement officers the same way he makes fun of the violent murders of so many other people? Let's watch.

Stephen Taylor's Blogging Tories: Standing up for law and order and cops everywhere. Until it gets kind of inconvenient. Then, eh, not so much.

BY THE WAY, if you didn't see this coming, you're a moron. Or a Blogging Tory. But I repeat myself.

6 comments:

Southern Quebec said...

"Hunter" was a pro-gun post today. Guns good...

Romantic Heretic said...

That shooting spree the other day in New York, in my opinion, has the same cause.

A small but significant portion of the U.S. population regards themselves as the direct descendants of the Founding Fathers.

They regard themselves as oppressed as by a foreign government. And they regard war as the only solution to this problem. Indeed, many of them would prefer a war to alleviate their fear and anger at being victimized.

Hang on to your hats because it's going to get a lot worse.

Boris said...

It'll be a tough one but eventually they'll come around to more or less blaming Obama for the spree while simultaneously disassociating themselves from Poplawski for not being a 'responsible gun owner' and killing cops. At the same time, they will again talk about how they are afraid the state will take their toys away and how they'll defend their life, liberty and property against agents of the state, who are cops, whom they also see as heroes. The conversation will inevitably decend into a passionate discussion about how much ammo they've bought, and the relative merits and drawbacks of different firearms, with the occassional 'god bless their souls' thrown in as a nod to the victims of their cognitive paradoxes. Disgusting really.

wv-patents

Boris said...

I should also add that certain Canadian wingnuts will forget where they live and also natter about how Obama will take their guns away.

Unknown said...

That shooting spree the other day in New York, in my opinion, has the same cause.

And when you throw the (often violently) anti-immigrant rhetoric favored by wingnuts into the mix, the only surprise is that there aren't more Binghamtons.

For the record, I spent my undergrad years in Pittsburgh. Violent crime was not unheard of there, especially after the steel industry left, but the 'Burgh is pretty solidly Dem, so to have a wingnut-inspired rampage happen there is a real shock to the system.

sassy said...

Boris - "I should also add that certain Canadian wingnuts will forget where they live and also natter about how Obama will take their guns away."

It happened just the other day.
We Canadians have the right to bear arms and nothing in Canadian law even matters when it comes to your life.