So, of course, the Right has pushed back hard against allegations that two years of eliminationist rhetoric helped sew the seeds that bloomed in bloody mayhem on Saturday.
Again, I don't want to argue that Loughner was a Tea Party guy. I don't think he was. I think he is insane.
But that doesn't make what he did any less of an attempt at political assassination. Daniel Larison links Loughner to Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist who assassinated McKinley, and he talks of Loughner's nihilism. And while he makes a few good points, I would not describe Loughner as a nihilist or an anarchist. I would describe him as a paranoid schizophrenic.
That doesn't mean he wasn't influenced by the toxic climate of today. It doesn't mean he wasn't influenced by the large numbers of Americans who think violence is an important part of American political life.
It's not Czolgosz we should be looking at, but Charles Guiteau.
Guiteau was - like Loughner - mentally ill. Whereas Loughner imbibed a fair amount of extreme political ideologies from reading Marx, Rand and Hitler, Guiteau tried to become a member of the Oneida Community a fairly radical cult. When Guiteau was rejected by the Oneida Community, he turned to politics, gave a speech - no doubt a poor one - and thought that James Garfield should make him an ambassador in gratitude. When Garfield passed on making this crazy person ambassador to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Guiteau stalked him to the train station and shot him. He assumed that the Stalwart faction of the Republican party would reward him for removing the Half Breed Garfield (politics have always been colorful).
In some ways, this is similar to Loughner blowing a gasket over Gifford's refusal to answer his insane question about mind control at an earlier constituency event.
Both Loughner and Guiteau had only a nodding acquaintance with reality. Both had simplistic political ideas untethered to any practical use. But both committed overtly political acts that were also crazy.
The aftermath of Garfield's assassination was the Pendleton Act and civil service reform. The spoils system of federal patronage had been the motivating issue behind Guiteau's act of mad violence. Chester Arthur was a prime player in the patronage system, as he had been head of the New York Custom's House - the plumb patronage job and notorious for corruption. But even Arthur could see the extremes to which the spoils system had led. Surprising perhaps even himself, he became known as "The Father of Civil Service" and set the stage for a government staffed by qualified professionals rather than corrupt cronies. The Progressive era and New Deal reforms would have been impossible if Arthur had not responded to Garfield's death by ending the system that had given animus and direction to Charles Guiteau.
Before Nixon went to China, Arthur became a reformer.
Now, Guiteau was an insane person who committed an act of political violence. Loughner is an insane person who committed an act of political violence.
But back in Garfield and Arthur's day there was at least a realization that the rampant corruption of the spoils system gave a focus and a motive to weak and deranged minds.
I am not holding my breath that there are any Chet Arthurs running around today, although there have been a few rumblings from people like Pawlenty and Scarborough. As Jon Stewart said, maybe the toxic discourse caused the shooting, maybe it didn't, but maybe we should still clean out the swamp of our political rhetoric regardless. If that happens, that will bring some small victory to this otherwise tragic and senseless act.
There is one big difference between Garfield and Gifford though, and it's an important one. Garfield's doctors probably killed him by rooting around in his wounds with dirty hands. Gifford had an intern who knew first aid and doctors who knew what they were doing. Garfield died and it looks like Gifford will live.
While the Crazy may still be as vibrant now as it was in 1881, at least our medicine is better.
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