No sooner do you surmise something than a Democrat confirms it. Here's Steny Hoyer, channeling Matty Woodchuck -- or is it the other way round?
“Today’s cowardly attack is ... equally devastating to every American—to everyone who cares about our democracy. Our form of government, like all human things, is imperfect and flawed; but one of its greatest virtues is its power to resolve questions of the greatest import without violence. An attack on a member of that government—of whatever party or whatever views—is an attack on that principle, in which every American has a stake.”Perfect, huh? If it had been half a dozen random Amurricans in a food court, that would have been one thing. But an attack on a member of the government...!
It's amazing how widespread, and widely accepted, this kind of thinking is. To take a random example, there are minatory notices these days, all over the various mass-transit modes that I ride, direly warning me that an assault on a bus driver or a train conductor or a token clerk is a very serious crime, much more serious than an assault on my elderly person would be, and I'd better not even think about it -- though I do think about it, and think about it a lot. Especially the bus drivers -- half bureaucrat, half motorist. Talk about hellspawn.
And then of course there's that business about shooting cops. Shoot a civilian, and take your chances. But shoot a cop, and you'll be hunted to the ends of the earth. Why, I wonder, are cops' and politicians' and, yes, busdrivers' lives, worth more than yours and mine?
I also can't forbear to remark on what must be my favorite cliche, which really needs to go into the famous Catechism:
Q: Of what variety was today's attack on us?Rosy-fingered dawn, fleet-footed Achilles, cowardly attack.
A: The cowardly variety.
Q: And by whom was our latest attack on someone else committed?
A: By our brave heroes in uniform, begob.
Now the crazed Laughner is not exactly a hero of mine, but for Steny Hoyer to call him a coward seems a bit much. Laughner showed up in person, knowing undoubtedly that troops of armed gendarmerie were prowling the streets, as they always and everywhere are these days, and he took his chances at close range. He must surely have known that either he would be killed on the spot, or dispatched leisurely, with all the refinements of medico-legal crypto-sadism, on a gurney in some antiseptic room, watched intently by a ghoulish Presbyterian board of elders trying to conceal their crypto-boners.
Whereas Steny and Obie and Hillary and Co. commit their mass murders by proxy, and never have to worry about the cops, or the needle.
I remember this "cowardly attack" trope from the 11 September aftermath. You couldn't mention the WTC attacks without noting, obligatorily, that they were "cowardly". Now the September airplane bombers knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that they would die the instant their mission was accomplished. In what demented world of discourse does the word "cowardly" fit their case?
Comments (11)
It's hard not to feel for the family of the nine year old girl who was shot and killed. Yggles sees the implication for power, not the dead child.
Posted by Jack Crow | January 8, 2011 6:24 PM
Posted on January 8, 2011 18:24
The Huffington Post's Sam Stein:
"The most illustrative window is Loughner’s YouTube account, which appears to be hub of anti-government zealotry, obsession over currency and language standards, and, to put it bluntly, outright paranoia."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/08/gabrielle-giffords-shot-c_n_806211.html
Posted by Jack Crow | January 8, 2011 6:48 PM
Posted on January 8, 2011 18:48
MJS:
...To take a random example, there are minatory notices these days, all over the various mass-transit modes that I ride, direly warning me that an assault on a bus driver or a train conductor or a token clerk is a very serious crime, much more serious than an assault on my elderly person would be, and I'd better not even think about it -- though I do think about it, and think about it a lot. Especially the bus drivers -- half bureaucrat, half motorist. Talk about hellspawn...
Um... they really compare the life of a driver to the life of an elderly person? Verbatim? In some PSA? Please post a link. I've gotta' see this.
Slap my wrist as hard as you like, but I actually sort of see logic here. If you whip out your sawed-off shotgun or whatever and blast my head off in a fit of pique, you've only killed me. If you blast off the head of the bus driver while they're working, there's a good possibility that you've just killed or at least imperiled a bunch of other people who just had the shit luck to be on the bus when you got angry at the driver. Even if you don't bother to fire another shot.
Then again, most of the drivers in this town are pretty mellow sorts. I haven't had too many problems with them.
I do feel creeped out by those "See Something? Say Something!" PSAs that are all over TriMet, though. I have some idea of what they want me to "say something" about, and I think our priorities in that regard might be just a wee bit different.
[shrug]
Posted by ms_xeno | January 8, 2011 7:25 PM
Posted on January 8, 2011 19:25
Posted by MJS | January 8, 2011 7:39 PM
Posted on January 8, 2011 19:39
It was 25-30 years ago that state legislatures began passing special laws to ramp up punishment of those who might assault or worse members of the legislature, the governor, and other high governmental types. I thought then that the laws that protect the average person from assault etc. must not be sufficiently punitive to protect significant functionaries from being importuned by ordinary citizens, i.e. citizens of the newly statutorily defined second class.
Are the governing classes more or less responsive to the complaints of ordinary citizens since this legal improvement was devised? Probably less responsive, but perhaps for other reasons than these silly laws.
I wonder how often such special punishments -- lengthened prison terms and capital-crime upgrades, I suppose -- have been invoked in prosecutions? I wonder how many special classes of extra protection exist and if anyone has kept track? Perhaps the prosecutors simply enter all imaginable descriptors of the 'special' victim and a computer program spits out the maximum charges.
Posted by Nonny Recalls | January 8, 2011 8:57 PM
Posted on January 8, 2011 20:57
I'm with my co-Portlander Ms. X on this one. Attacking a bus driver is by definition an attack on the entire bus, as well as on the very concept of public transit. It is also an especially obvious and tempting idea to the criminal mind, and therefore deserves an extra deterrent, at least arguably.
I even have some sympathy for the argument as it applies to Congresscritters and other public office holders. However venal they now are, there is something to be said for the argument that public service is not necessarily an oxymoron under all conditions. It is also a pretty obvious/attractive target.
None of which is to say it isn't terrible to be forced to talk in these terms. We ought to be working toward a society where jails are dying.
The early report seem to be suggesting that this thing is about untreated mental illness, substance abuse/addiction, economic hopelessness, racism, right-wing govt bashing, and handguns. In roughly that order.
What a country.
Posted by Michael Dawson | January 8, 2011 9:36 PM
Posted on January 8, 2011 21:36
Your post, MJS, puts me in mind of what Susan Sontag wrote soon after 9/11:
"The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public. Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a 'cowardly' attack on 'civilization' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And if the word 'cowardly' is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards."
- Susan Sontag, The New Yorker: Talk of the Town (24 September 2001)
A Babel-tower of abuse then collapsed upon Sontag for having written these words. "Traitor" was the epithet de rigueur. Like anyone who has made a commonsense analysis, she then walked the Media Stations of the Cross: no, she was not a supporter of al-Qaeda; yes, she thought the attack was evil; no, she did not think that the victims deserved it; no, she did not think that soldiers are cowards; etc.
This is the sort of catechizing we all must face whenever we say something even the least bit dissenting. Against the death penalty? Don't you think that murder is wrong? Do you think that killers should simply go scot-free? Do you feel nothing for the pain of the families? It's enough to make a Bartleby of anyone.
Posted by Erasmian | January 9, 2011 3:43 AM
Posted on January 9, 2011 03:43
Thanks, Erasmian. I always liked Sontag, but somehow this one escaped me.
Posted by MJS | January 9, 2011 3:57 PM
Posted on January 9, 2011 15:57
The usual contempt for working folk from MJS. What else is new? Oh, and the whole "how is this a coward?" schtick..you're 10 years late with that "original" thought. Bill Maher got sacked from ABC for that one right after 9/11.
A lot of you SMBIVA's could take a lesson from Al in basic respect for civil servants. But what fun would that be? Better to throw around Latin terms, advertise your education and breeding, and spew invective at your lessers.
Posted by Milton Marx | January 9, 2011 5:44 PM
Posted on January 9, 2011 17:44
I'm with you except for the bus drivers.
Posted by ethan | January 10, 2011 10:20 AM
Posted on January 10, 2011 10:20
Some of 'em are OK, the bus drivers I mean. But I dunno how they do it. The conditions of work on that job kinda bring out the worst in people. The folks on the train are part of a crew. But the bus driver is solus rex.
Posted by MJS | January 10, 2011 10:39 PM
Posted on January 10, 2011 22:39