And the original exploiter of the dead weighs in. I was wondering how long it would take. Obviously Bill Clinton isn’t weighing in on Tucson to tamp down the left’s white hot blame game or set off a chorus of bipartisan comity and “Kumbayah.” No, no, no. Bill Clinton is weighing in to say the same thing the rest of the left is saying, just with a bit more spin on the ball.
“No one intends to do anything that encourages this sort of behaviour,” he said. But political rhetoric “falls on the unhinged and the hinged alike”.
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Speaking on a trip to Haiti, Mr Clinton said: “We cannot be unaware of the fact that – particularly with the internet – there’s this huge echo chamber out there.”
He called on the US House of Representatives to “lead the way” in toning down the discourse.
“This is an occasion for us to reaffirm that our political differences shouldn’t degenerate into demonisation, in the sense that if you don’t agree with me you’re not a good American,” he said.
“I’m hoping there will be a lot of good debates that go beyond turning this into politics… about how and why it happened and what else we can do to minimise those things.”
How is this different in substance from the calls to ban using crosshairs in political ads, or slamming talk radio? It’s not. Clinton even explicitly calls on the House to “lead the way” in toning things down, and by that it’s unlikely he’s calling on former Rep. Kanjorski to cool it with the “shoot the Republican” talk. He’s calling on them to pass laws to curb political speech, ban guns and the rest. Which “echo chamber” is he talking about? Why, in all likelihood, the same one Rep. Brad Sherman is talking about in the earlier post: The Republican Party, conservative blogosphere and talk radio. Minus the blogosphere, that’s who Clinton deftly pinned Oklahoma City on back in 1995.
Reminder: The “political tone” didn’t make Jared Lee Loughner a paranoid schizophrenic. Palin’s map didn’t make him shoot anyone, any more than the Kos map made him shoot anyone. He’s not a political “extremist.” Crazy is as crazy does, and the only real remedy is to treat mental illness more effectively. And even that won’t prevent every single future atrocity.
It’s become evident over the past few days that our political class is infested with soulless ghouls.
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