The shooting... An incoherent ramble.

Edit:  I am not happy with this post.  It didn't really gel.  I should delete it, but I don't want to get into the habit of having a memory hole.

I don't know who Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) is.


I don't live in her district.


I hope she makes a full recovery.


She should not have been shot.


The thoughts I have reading some of the stories about this are not about her or the shooter.


Fox News has quoted John Lewis (D-GA) and Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) about how this is all very familiar to them; referring to racial violence and homophobia respectively.


Except it's not familiar from those perspectives.  Ms Pelosi is closer to the mark, Mr Lewis is 180˚ off.


Pima county's sheriff is closest to why this happened.  I got a more complete quote, he's wrong.


Mr Lewis, what direction was civil rights violence going in 1965 when you were beaten near to death?  That wasn't a constituent, that was a deputy.  It was state and local governments denying your civil rights and becoming violent when you demanded them.


Ms Pelosi, the murderer of Mayor Moscone and supervisor Milk was, apparently, not motivated by homophobia but rather just mundane and petty revenge of a relatively small slight.


What they are right about is the level of anger is because of civil rights being denied.  Property rights are civil rights.  Taxes are a concession of a small amount of property to further the common welfare via government.  Promoting the needs of those who have conceded nothing over those who have and demanding ever more from them is a civil rights issue; and those constituents have a right to be angry about it.  If their rights are continually and systematically ignored they will eventually have the right to revolt, even violently.  We're not there yet, but I can see it coming if something doesn't change soon.


The crazies are the ones who will start first.  I think that's what we saw here.  His writings and posts (if it's the same person) show that he's definitely unhappy with his representative.  What his rambling doesn't show me is that he made a considered decision based on having no other recourse to secure his rights.


But his actions don't have anything to do with the building anger and resentment in the more general populace.


The gun people are winning now, but we understand the desperate feeling of nothing we do or say seems to matter.


Things I keep hearing about from my less political friends is about the government wasting literally tons of money, illegal immigration, property rights, gas prices and taxes.  They don't like that people are paying negative taxes (getting a tax "return" when they've paid zero income tax).  They don't like that the norm for welfare is serial and multi-generational.  They don't like illegal immigrants are colonizing where they have large numbers; one gets the impression that if they were here illegally and working hard on becoming just like us we wouldn't care (but they aren't).  Kelo scared a lot of people; especially in neighborhoods like mine with a lot of empty rental properties.  Energy prices are pissing a lot of people off especially since we've been sitting on undeveloped reserves for decades.  Taxes are bothersome since so much is increasing in price that the government taking a larger percentage means we have to lower our standards of living; while watching the non-payers get an increasing amount of aid.


This anger would be abated somewhat if the mass media had not picked A side.  If there was an even mix of biased news sources, we could see both sides and come to something of an informed opinion on matters.  What we have now is biased, biased in one direction and obviously so.


I didn't say this would make sense at the beginning.  But I needed to let some of it out.  If I got it all wrong, please comment briefly.  If your comment is longer than this post, link me to your blog...