Incitement and Terror in America Today
It's been a slow couple of days in the political world, so I would like to take the opportunity to write about three incidents that have occurred in the last few weeks: the murder by a professor in Alabama with a history of violence, of three of her fellows, a guy in Texas that flew his small plane into an IRS building, and a person with a 15 year history of mental illness driving across the country to attempt to shoot up the Pentagon. Naturally, the first instinct of Republicans is to blame all of this on liberals, and I have seen plenty of that on the wingnut blogs. I want to suggest a more truthful account of how these three people, all showing signs of mental unbalance, came to commit their violent acts. The history of "terrorism" at least back to 19th century Russian nihilism is very consistent. Inciters of the violence almost invariably manage to disconnect themselves from the actual perpetrators. Those responsible for causing the violence normally restrict them...