Goat Rodeo Cowboy said:
KeithE4, I am disappointed in your reply.
You are quite unhappy that people on the east coast are apparently not of sufficient intelligence to comment on things in Arizona, and yet you are rather opinionated on a couple of points yourself that can be questioned.
I don't think they are unintelligent. I do think that they heard the word "Arizona" and immediately jumped to the conclusions that they wanted to jump to, and without any facts to back them up. Remember when many folks in the media jumped to the conclusion that the OKC bombing was done by an Arab terrorist? They were wrong then, and they're wrong now. Maybe in time there will be evidence to back up their claims, but no such data exists as of right now.
The question originating this thread is in the INDIANA board, and the question(s):
What is Hate Talk
Does it exist here? (Indiana?)
I'm no longer in Indiana so I'll have to leave the answer to those that are there.
Maybe you have personal knowledge that Loughner "has been known for several years to be potentially dangerous and seriously mentally ill" but after sifting through all the reports from as many sources as I can come across, intelligent people seem to be saying "he POSSIBLY met that description" but so far there is no record that this was known.
He was kicked out of Pima Community College with orders not to return until he gets a psychiatric evaluation. He never got one. The red flags have been there for quite a while. Unfortunately in Arizona one is not crazy until a judge says he/she is. He was never arrested and had no criminal record before Saturday.
I, too, have heard that there was an encounter serveral years ago. You are the only source that has treid to say the attach of last Saturday was BASED on that previous encounter.
This has been all over the news. Loughner has had it in for Rep. Giffords ever since they met once a few years ago. We don't know why yet.
I'm a reasonable judge of "blowhards" and over time we may learn that the Sheriff of Pima county is one, but so far what those of us can see from a distance is a man exercising unusual restraint and intelligence.
Dupnik is well known in Arizona for running his mouth. It's apparently part of the job description of a county sheriff in Arizona. He has been the sheriff there for quite a long time and has quite a reputation for speaking his mind. What he accuses other people of, he also did.
It is not impressive when someone refers to "the babbling of the east-coast Windbag-American community".
That's where the jumping-to-conclusions came from: Paul Krugman of the NY Times, Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, Bill Press on his radio show yesterday.
So we are left with the question: What is hate talk? And does it happen in Indiana? Since I moved away from Indiana a few years ago, I am in no position to assess what is being said there today. I did talk radio there a few years ago and I can tell you that there were some people in the state then who were capable of spewing some hate talk, but primarily the population was not all wrapped up in hateful rhetoric. At the time I was impressed that the thinking and speech of the community called Indiana was rather thoughtful and balanced.
There cannot be a definition of "hate talk" and still obey the First Amendment, unless you want to define it as a tangible threat to another person. It's not illegal to hate. It is illegal to act on that hate, either physically or verbally. If I say "I hate that guy" for whatever reason, that's completely legal. But if I call a person up and say "You'd better watch it because I'm gonna kill you," then that can be prosecuted since it is threatening the life of another person.
Unless new evidence comes out, this was the work of an insane lunatic acting alone.
Tell me about insane lunatics. I am under the impression that they sometimes react to information that is not accurate. They wrap themselves around this inaccurate information and feel justified in their actions which the rest of us judge as insane.
We have a nationwide problem of how we deal with the insane. Or how WE DON'T DEAL with the insane. We need to have a national conversation about this. Arizona needs to have a statewide conversation about this if I can believe the descriptions given in interviews BY SOME ARIZONA RESIDENTS.
On that, I agree with you 100%. Arizona's (and probably many other states) mental health system, both public and private, is an absolute joke. And I speak from experience since I have dealt with the system here on behalf of a family member for the last 13 years. People like Loughner who are dangerously mentally ill don't get locked up because (1) they were not arrested and brought before a judge, and (2) even if they were, there are very few places to put them. Psych hospitals have been shutting down in Arizona for years, and those that are still open have very limited space. It's usually five days and out unless a judge says otherwise. Could his family intervened if they wanted to? Not likely due to lack of space to put him.
Estimates are that there are between 60,000 and 100,000 seriously mentally ill folks in the Tucson area, with only 20,000 or so in treatment. This is in a metro area with a population of around one million. That seems a bit large to me, but it does make a point. Mental illness is an epidemic in Arizona and has been for many years. And treatment is far too expensive for most of them, and the public option is all but worthless.
There is a COMPANION discussion that also needs to take place in this country. The fans of Talk Radio must lay awake nights mumbling all night long: "Nobody listens to Talk Radio and does something stupid or illegal because they were mislead by talkers." Those who detest Talk Radio as we know must lay awake nights mumbling all night long: "Stupid people and crazy people are doing criminal things every day because Talk Radio told them it was O.K."
Thanks to Indiana University, I sat through psychology courses until they called me in and said: You have reached the limit. If you take any more, they WILL NOT count toward your degree requirements. And based on that great educational foundation, let me offer you this possibility: The truth is somewhere between those two lay-awake-at-night scenarios and I propose that it is important that we have rational, national discussion of what the kind of verbiage we are hearing on the radio today does to people who live with minds and psyches that are not perfectly wired.
Crazy people will blame someone else for their crime, at least in their own twisted minds, such as John Hinkley's excuse that he was trying to impress Jodie Foster when he shot Ronald Reagan and James Brady. Was it Jodie Foster's fault? Of course not. It's not Rush Limbaugh's, Glen Becks, or any other talk show host's fault that Loughner is a nut, even if evidence does come out that he was a regular listener to talk radio.
Even the strong supporters of the 2nd Amendment seem to agree we don't want to sell guns to known criminals and to "crazy people". Would it not be a comparable choice for our country to say: We don't feed hate speech to the insane people among us. So we need to get busy and define hate speech, and then we need to define ways we deal with people who have elements of insanity in their life.
There are several problems with Arizona's lax gun laws. One, like I said earlier, is the fact that a person in Arizona is sane until a judge says otherwise. Two, even if one is found to be insane and as a result, is not allowed to own a gun, the federal database (which is what we go by) is so screwed up that many crazy people slip through the cracks. Three, legal or not, if somebody wants a gun, they will get one.
