The Sanity Defense

Events that are beyond human decisions do happen; social arrangements do change without benefit of explicit decision. But in so far as such decisions are made--and in so far as they could be but are not made--the problem of who is involved in making them--or in not making them--is the basic problem of power. It is also the problem of history making, and so of the causes of war.

- C. Wright Mills, The Causes of World War III, 1958.

For the past several months I've been occupied with other interests and have not written anything on my blog for some time. However if you aren't aware, there was a multiple-murder event in Tucson AZ on Saturday January 2011. The injuries to at least six people were fatal, among them was U.S. District Judge John Roll, a nine year old child born September 11, 2001, an assistant to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-AZ. Others were seriously injured, one of whom was Congresswoman Giffords, who appears to have been the primary target.

The alleged perpetrator captured while attempting to leave the scene, Jared Loughner, is now held under Federal custody and has been described by MSNBC as (a) paranoid, aggressive, conspiracy theorist. Theorist? This guy has gotten way out of the realm of theory.

The story is quite convoluted. Today the media is full of stories on this topic and the MSNBC story seems to cover the most pertinent details. Laughner faces multiple Federal charges including an attempt to assassinate Representative Gabrielle. Her condition remains critical at the time of this article.   If I were only interested in covering the incident, what I've written so far is a reasonable summary of what is known at this point in time regarding the events that took place on Saturday.  Events of this nature have been replayed in the United States so many times now beginning in the 1960s. However there is perhaps more to this story than what you've read so far. As Paul Krugman notes in Sunday's New York Times:

When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen? Put me in the latter category. I’ve had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since the final stages of the 2008campaign. I remembered the upsurge in political hatred after Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 — an upsurge that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. And you could see, just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies, that it was ready to happen again. The Department of Homeland Security reached the same conclusion: in April 2009 an internal reportwarned that right-wing extremism was on the rise, with a growing potential for violence. Conservatives denounced that report. But there has, in fact, been a rising tide of threats and vandalism aimed at elected officials, including both Judge John Roll, who was killed Saturday, and Representative Gabrielle Giffords. One of these days, someone was bound to take it to the next level. And now someone has. Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.

Some of my friends in Western Europe have asked me in the past why the political discourse in the United States is so xenophobic and filled with obvious precursors of violence. I've never had an answer but you can feel it everywhere, e.g. Health Care reform becomes "socialized medicine" and those who support it are compared to Hitler.

There are far too many examples of this brand of thinking and I don't feel like going through them, all of them. However you may look backward in the blog and see many stories I've written on this subject even before the election of November 2008. What you will find is the right-wing nutcases always were there.

Here is suggested reading:

Neo-Right - Neo-Nazi

Blowout Prevention

The Politics of Reality Denial

Living on the Edge of Madness

Say Americans - Why So Scared?

Delusional Beliefs and Political Extremism

The Already Wealthy  

However there is a major perversion here, actually there is no "Sanity Defense." It is really a call to action for those who are not insane. The claim for sanity alone is totally insufficient for credibility. Something greater must be done to halt this madness.  For a beginning, the ideologues and the nut-cases who take what they (the ideologues) iterate literally and constantly must be separated. The terror of violent rhetoric and what it induces must be stopped. 

So I think there is cause for concern about the United States. Just what is going on here, why all the screaming, name calling and thinly veiled threats in what passes as public discourse? It is legitimate to ask is this an example of a second amendment remedy. President Lincoln, a victim of violence himself, described that process as "going from the ballot to the bullet."

Most modern nations have federal, state and local police forces to defend citizens from violent attacks. In such locations citizens aren't required to be overly concerned about protecting themselves, i.e., personal possession of weapons for safety is not required. Also in other modern states, a high level of trust is given to government and its ability to shield its citizens from events now seemingly uniquely common to the United States.

And most importantly, in other countries individuals that are mentally ill would not be able to easily obtain weapons of lethality. Indeed it is far more likely that the mentally ill would receive medical care as opposed to weapons procurement and training. Comprehensive health care for all would be a much higher priority than for example accumulating nuclear weapons and delivery systems.

It is long overdue for the United States to decide what kind of country it really is and wants to become. Otherwise now as in the past, it remains a problematic and in certain locations a dangerous place to inhabit.