The Voices in Our Heads
At 10:10 am on January 8, 2011, outside a Safeway store in Casas Adobes Arizona, 23 year old Jared Lee Loughner walked up to United States Representative Gabrielle Giffords and shot her in the head. Then he fired into the crowd of about 30 people who had come hear her speak. Six people were killed, including a 9 year old girl, and 13 others were wounded in the attack.
We all seemed to know the answer to the question “How could this happen?” before it was even asked. The whole world knew. French newspaper Le Monde said that the attack seemed to confirm “… an alarming premonition that has been gaining momentum for a long time: that the verbal and symbolic violence that the most radical right-wing opponents have used in their clash with the Obama administration would at some point lead to tragic physical violence.“
The mouthpieces on the Right denied any responsibility and the mushy headed liberals in the middle made up a false equivalency argument that blamed The Right and The Left for creating an inflammable atmosphere of hate and violence.
Jared Lee Loughner dropped out of high school, drank too much, took a wide assortment of psychedelic drugs, and believed in conspiracy theories regarding 9/11, The New World Order, and Mind Control. Perhaps someday some psychiatrist will ask Loughner why he did what he did and then The Media will have everything they need to neatly wrap up the story.
The “Liberal” media will say the overheated political rhetoric from the extreme Right and the extreme Left created an environment where a mentally unbalanced person could more easily slip his moorings and go on a rampage. Take one false equivalency argument, add a crazy person, and there you have it. The 2011 Tucson shooting explained. There is no solution. It was a crazy person. You can’t predict what will set off a nutcase. End of Story.
The mouthpieces on The Right were lucky … this time. Loughner didn’t have any books by Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, or Rush Limbaugh stashed in his room. In the past when there were direct connections between Right Wing media figures and the assassins inspired by them, the Mainstream Media had to go into overdrive ignoring those stories.
Bill O’Reilly called Dr. George Tiller a “Baby Killer” some 28 times before Scott Roeder finally got the message and walked into a church and shot Tiller in the head.
Glenn Beck demonized The Tides Foundation, in fact he was the only media figure who had ever talked about the organization. Byron Williams heeded the call, jumped into his car armed with a 9mm handgun, a .308-caliber rifle and a shotgun. After being pulled over on I-580 in California Williams told investigators that “… his intention was to start a revolution by traveling to San Francisco and killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU.“
All you have to do is pick up your Ticonderoga number two pencil and connect two dots.
There.
You’ve done something Brian Williams, Diane Sawyer, and Katie Couric refuse to do. And will never do. Brian Williams salary is over 10 million, Diane Sawyer gets about 12, and Katie Couric is paid 15 million dollars a year. Their job, along with CNN, and FOX is to broadcast The Voice of America. The voice spreads lies, rage, racism, and fear … and it is used to get Americans to commit murder.
The Mainstream Media ignored the lies of the Bush Regime during the run up to the war of Iraq. As soldiers were racing towards Baghdad, embedded Katie Couric gushed, “You guys rock!“
All the network heads and their anchors had to know that the Bush Regime was lying us into war. How come we knew and they didn’t? Their research departments are a lot bigger than ours. They had to know. Had they never heard of Scott Ritter? Not Likely. But instead of exposing the lies, they collaborated with the liars. And were handsomely paid for their efforts.
The political “rhetoric” that compels people to kill in this country is the same rhetoric that compels our armies to kill people in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. The Voice of America used the shock, fear, and anger from September 11th to compel Americans to invade and slaughter.
For 7 years the United States government, led by the C.I.A., has attacked people along the Afghan border in Northwest Pakistan using unmanned aerial drones.
Begun under George W. Bush, these attacks were a part of the “War on Terror” seeking to defeat the Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants who were thought to have found a safe haven in Pakistan.
These strikes are mostly carried out by drones operated remotely from Creech Air Force Base, located 35 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and have continued under Barack Obama. The drones are MQ-1 Predators and more recently MQ-9 Reapers armed with AGM-114 Hellfire missiles.
On January 13, 2006: Damadola air strike kills 18 civilians in the Bajaur area.
October 30, 2006: Chenagai air strike allegedly aimed at Ayman al-Zawahri destroys a madrassa in the Bajaur area and kills 70-80 civilians.
On August 23, 2010: Missiles fired from US drones in North Waziristan kill 13 militants and seven civilians. Four women and three children are among the dead.
The person who drove to work, parked his car, walked into a building on Creech Air Force Base, sat down at his computer, and directed a drone attack on human beings 8,000 miles away was listening to The Voice of America.
It is the voice of today’s American Exceptionalism and yesterday’s Manifest Destiny. It was the same voice heard by our soldiers who used white phosphorus on women and children in Fallujah, and beat innocent people to death in Abu Ghraib.
The Voice of America is the voice of a madman … a psychopath. The voice is saying that it is okay to kill to get what you need for the empire to continue.
It is the voice of George H. W. Bush in 1992 saying, “The American way of life is not negotiable.”
If you told your shrink that the voice in your head was telling you to kill the night manager at the 7-11 you’d be whisked away for “observation.” If you were Henry Kissinger and the voices in your head told you to exterminate millions of Vietnamese and enrich your buddies in the Military Industrial Complex … you’d get the goddamned Nobel Peace Prize.
I don’t see much difference between Jared Lee Loughner and the guy at the joystick controlling an aerial drone attack in Pakistan. They’re just a couple of Americans following the crazy voices in their heads. The Voice of America calls for the destruction of whole populations. Beck and O’Reilly just single someone out every now and again. As far as I can tell the only differences are geography and body count.
The Voices in Our Heads January 25, 2011
