All posts tagged "Paranoia"

In the wake of this shooting and the admirable attempts to hold the right responsible for creating an environment where targeting of politicians for violence is bound to happen, some efforts have taken the form of policing metaphors for violence. I've seen people go as far as to quarrel with using language of the battlefield that has been drained through repetition of all its impact. I promise you, saying things like "target" or even "set your sights" isn't really contributing to the problem of political violence. I do think that gun nuttery raises the temperature, but not just because it suggests violence as a legitimate response to losing elections, but it also raises the level of paranoia. I do think there's value in talking about the use of inciting language, like Sarah Palin is fond of doing, but I have to say that is probably less of a problem than paranoia. The violent rhetoric encourages people to see violence as a solution, but it's the paranoia that gives them cause to get that wound up, or in the likely case of Loughner, to latch onto right wing paranoia as a delusion. It's therefore more important to target lies and paranoia when holding the right accountable than anything else. They'd probably prefer it if we stuck to just talking about violent language, because that they can mostly give up without giving up too much. But abandoning lies? That's definitely not something they want to put on the table. But it's way more critical.

Bill Sparkman, the Census worker found dead hanging from a tree with the word "Fed" scrawled across his body, was found to be a suicide. This news is sure to cause some darkly amoral celebrating on the right, who will claim that this vindicates their paranoia and hatred they've built up against innocent, hard-working federal bureaucrats as part of a larger anti-tax-for-the-wealthy program. It does not, and I flinch to think of how tasteless this is going to get. Sparkman's death was a tragedy, no matter how you slice it. That he staged it as a murder to get the life insurance payment most likely only speaks to his concerns about his inheritors, probably his son. Depression is a terrible and often deadly disease, and obviously, it distorts people's thinking.