I Don't Really Know What To Say

No cute picture right now.

If the shooter is the same Loughner as posted this crap in YouTube, then he's clearly a deranged nut job.  But his rhetoric is the same as some of the people on the right and not just the fringe either.  I am emphatically NOT saying that Loughner is representative of the Tea Party.  I AM saying he's an inevitable product of it.

He's a mentally deranged person with access to firearms.  And my guess, from his rhetoric, that he's imbibed some of the Tea Party rhetoric, especially the anti-government anger that especially typifies Arizona.

This is what happens when political arguments become imbued with the language of revolutions and violence.  Sarah Palin didn't shoot Gabby Giffords, she just put out a flier with Giffords in literal crosshairs.

I imagine many Republicans see themselves as simply playing political hardball with their extreme rhetoric, but once you start saying the Democrats are literally going to kill Grannie... How big a jump is it to protecting Grannie with weapons?  I saw this movie the last time a Democrat held the White House, and it sucked then, too.  My hope is that the post 9/11 police state will protect us from another Timothy McVeigh, but we all know that people have been sending mailbombs this week, don't we?  We know this is a problem, right?

As the days pass, my guess is that outside of the Internet and a few commentators on MSNBC, few journalists will call the various voices in the Right to task for this.

But for now, I hope that Congresswoman Giffords and all the other wounded heal quickly and fully.

And in church tomorrow I will pray for the parents of the ten year old child who died today.  My heart breaks thinking about it.

But I don't think I will bring myself to pray for Jared Loughner, mentally ill though he might be.  I know I'm supposed to.  I just don't think I have it in me right now.

A ten year old kid....

Update: The little girl was 9 years old.  And she was born exactly one day before our son.  She loved baseball and was elected to her student council recently.

She loved ballet.