Cartoon "Self-Hatred" and "Viciousness"
The man who (apparently) says this….
In a larger sense there is a link between anti-government rhetoric and the actions of this obviously deranged man. He is not "troubled", he is crazed. But he knows that the larger enemy is the "government", even though I suspect he has no idea, other than the police, what the government is. So in my experience, there is plenty of linkage, the linkage of a constant steady pressure, constant yammering on right wing radio, and constant political advertising to strike at the government, linking to a weak and distracted mind, inured to the real cost of violence by video games and super-violent films. And to this the easy availability of Glocks in a state like Arizona, and the result is more than predictable. Only willful political opportunism could blind anmyone [sic] to it. This same connection drove Timothy McVeigh and others. This won't, I regret to say, be the last incident, not as long as the self-hatred in this country goes unanswered. […]
The disgusting part is the lack of inclination to blame the people untimately [sic] responsible. They are again being given a pass for the viciousness they have engendered, at least in part.
Draws this….
What's especially delicious is that the cartoon is an illustration for this George Will column, which (to put it mildly) arrives at a different conclusion (and is well worth your attention).
Is there a word, preferably in German (note: not for Nazi connotations, but for making-word-longness and comical umlauts), for the kind of self-unawareness that declaims violence-tinged hyperbole by portraying a big chunk of the American population as complicit in murder? Read the whole (alleged) Danziger exchange with an objecting reader here. Related Danziger art cartoonery below: