When I say we should politicize this I mean the following:
1. Use this to defeat politicians who use abolitionist rhetoric against abortion
— Jesse Berney (@jesseberney) November 28, 2015
2. Use this to pass legislation to protect a woman's absolute and fundamental right to choose
— Jesse Berney (@jesseberney) November 28, 2015
3. Use this to paint the opposition to abortion as violent, unhinged theocracy
— Jesse Berney (@jesseberney) November 28, 2015
From the Washington Post:
COLORADO SPRINGS — The gunman suspected of storming a Planned Parenthood clinic and killing a police officer and two others used the phrase “no more baby parts’’ to explain his actions, according to a law enforcement official, a comment likely to further inflame the heated rhetoric surrounding abortion.
The attack on the clinic, allegedly by Robert Lewis Dear Jr., was “definitely politically motivated,’’ said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is still underway. NBC News, which first reported the comment, said that Dear also mentioned President Obama in a range of statements to investigators that left his precise motivation unclear.
Yet even as authorities released few details about Friday’s shootings, the politics of the highly charged abortion issue seemed to outstrip their efforts to be methodical. Antiabortion activists denied any knowledge of Dear and said he is not affiliated with their movement, but abortion rights advocates countered that comments by conservatives against Planned Parenthood had precipitated the violence…
“Everybody’s entitled to their own opinion. And their own arsenal, as well.”
Dr. Jennifer Conti, at Slate, “Anti-Abortion Terrorism Must Be Stopped“:
… We can speculate long and hard about the gunman’s motives or targets, but what is more significant—what keeps me up at night as an OB/GYN physician—is the concern that we as a nation have become complacent. Was it truly a shock that something so horrific emerged only weeks after anti–Planned Parenthood rhetoric dominated the presidential candidate debates? What was all of this manipulative campaigning if not an invitation to incite hate? And now this.
A few people were injured and only a few people died, some headlines will say. That’s not so many compared to the recent acts of terrorism in Paris. But here’s the irony: This is a homegrown terrorist, one that no amount of passport authentication or refugee rejection could have stopped. We spend all this effort agonizing over external threats, all the while overlooking the extremism, bigotry, and hatred that lives down the street. And now this.
This is a sign of crisis. When women are too scared to seek medical care for fear of being shot on the way to clinic, we are in crisis mode. This is beyond bullying and this is no longer simply a politicizing issue. This is a runaway train on which nobody is pulling the brakes. How far does this have to play out before we can stop pretending that abortion care is not real health care? Since 1977, there have been eight murders, 17 attempted murders, 42 bombings, 186 arsons, and thousands of incidents of criminal activity associated with U.S. abortion clinics. These numbers do not include what happened in Colorado Springs…
In 1998, after the shooting of abortion provider Barnett Slepian, the U.S. Department of Justice established a Task Force on Violence Against Health Care Providers. This is the group that coordinates national investigations of incidents like that in Colorado Springs. There are also efforts in place to prevent such tragedies from happening in the first place. The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act prohibits any violent, threatening, damaging, or obstructive act that interferes with obtaining or providing abortions. These are the laws. How we choose to uphold them, however, is a different story.
Anti-choice terrorism can be stopped. When it’s recognized for what it truly is, and when preventing it is given enough support on both sides of the aisle, this can be stopped. As with many critical issues, the first step is often the most difficult—recognizing that there is a problem. We are there now, and we need legitimate, sustainable solutions before this happens again.
The NYTimes:
… In Washington, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said in a statement that the shooting was “not only a crime against the Colorado Springs community, but a crime against women receiving health care services at Planned Parenthood, law enforcement seeking to protect and serve, and other innocent people. It was also an assault on the rule of law, and an attack on all Americans’ right to safety and security.”
Senior Justice Department officials were looking into whether to move forward with a federal case. Along with examining whether Mr. Dear could be charged with a hate crime, officials were exploring whether he may have violated federal laws intended to protect abortion clinics. In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which makes it a crime to use physical force against patients and clinic employees.
President Obama on Saturday again called on America to tackle gun violence. “This is not normal,” he said in a statement. “We can’t let it become normal. If we truly care about this — if we’re going to offer up our thoughts and prayers again, for God knows how many times, with a truly clean conscience — then we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them.”…
The headline on that story?
The Times has now removed "gentle" btw pic.twitter.com/MmiuT1TVJA
— Jack Mirkinson (@jackmirkinson) November 29, 2015
Debbie(aussie)
‘gentle loner’ really! Are the NYT short on cash and unable to employ editor/s or is it just a shortage of f*cking empathy? Again for emphasis really!
grammypat
Can we add “Domestic Terrorism” to the tags list? The more people start publicly calling these politically motivated murders what they really are, the sooner they will be taken seriously. I just sent a donation to PP with the notation “Because of that terrorist in Colorado.”
Amir Khalid
A “gentle” loner? Who left a trail of disputes and violent acts toward women? Facepalm.
Anne Laurie
@Amir Khalid: “Okay, he may have inadvertently frightened a few over-imaginative women. And he was… a little old-fashioned… about disciplining dogs. But he was never violent towards, y’know… people!” (/wish it were only snark)
Jordan Rules
Geeez. I’ve been done with our “media” and still every once and a while I have a face palm outburst.
Education and health care (broadly encompassed) have failed this country immensely.
Keith G
I don’t disagree with any, or at least most, of the above. I will note that the the shooter seems to not have many of his should-be normal compliment of oars in the water.
It will be interesting to see if this is being has a clinically diagnosable emotional malady. It sure seems so, but I’m willing to wait for professionals to make that judgement.
Even if sickness is a factor, that does not give any mitigation to the climate of emotionally charged conflict that has been purposely created by those on the Right who have been, in essence, waving the bloody shirt of the fabricated charge of the murder of youngsters.
jl
@Amir Khalid:
” A “gentle” loner? Who left a trail of disputes and violent acts toward women? ”
Well, I guess he was gentle with ‘real’ people: the bitter reactionary bigoted white American male. Others, of all variety of description, don’t really matter, aren’t really American (aka ‘people’). One should be excused for taking that as the subtext. Everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others.
jl
@Keith G:
“Ln essence, waving the bloody shirt of the fabricated charge of the murder of youngsters. ”
The ‘fabricated’, aka ‘damned lies’ sticks in my mind about it. Will be interesting to see whether the fact that the GOP presidential campaign has been sailing along in a raft of lies will be polite to mention now. About race, about Black Lives Matter, about Hispanic immigration, about abortion, about women’s health care, about effing health care itself, about refugees.. probably forgotten some things.
But, to be ‘fair’ some seem to think that children post birth are not real Americans (‘people’) either. Or youth in general. Like women, or certain racial/ethnic groups, they are a special interest group, moochers and suspect..
Keith G
@jl: Nonetheless, I can see it possible to make a truthful determination that the shooter was/is not a terrorist but just a deluded son of a worm who was predictably influenced/manipulated by the reckless, hateful speech of others.
If that was the case, this crime was not terrorism. This is all very premature. Again, I am willing and patient enough to let the professionals weigh in on what has happened here.
And those “others” I mentioned above need to be held to account no matter what the final disposition of the criminal case turns out to be.
jl
@Keith G: I agree that the case of the political instigators is clearer than exactly what the shooter thought (or was capable of thinking) he was doing. However, I do think that to the extent that a shooter believes he was committing violence to terrorize or persuade through fear and force, in order to achieve a political end, that is terrorism. If the shooter is mentally unbalanced, that is something that should be taken into account if he is found guilty of a crime, but that does not change the nature of the crime.
There has been no hesitation to characterize some plots in the US hatched by people who might be mentally deficient or unbalanced, even to the point there is doubt they could even have come close to carrying them out as terrorism. Those were characterized as related to Islamic extremism, and the people in question were not reactionary bitter white guys, so there is a difference there, but it is not a difference I feel bound to respect.
Keith G
@jl: it certainly does depend on what investigators find. For example, were they to uncover communications left by the shooter that indicate he believed he was acting on the behalf of a righteous god stepping into defend the unborn from being used as spare parts, I am not sure how that would fit into a statutory definition of a domestic terrorist act. Of course, given my knowledge of the topic that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be seen as part of a charge of terrorism.
Motive is what makes a criminal act a terrorist act. We are going to have to wait until some determination of motive is made.
And as a card-carrying liberal, I’m going to have to be content if it comes to the point that a determination is made that mental illness does not make it possible to have a clear view of the motive of the shooter.
Just because I am revolted by his actions, I will not jump on his due process rights. I hate that shit when it happened here in Texas and I’m not a fan of an elsewhere, either.
jl
@Keith G: I think the determination of whether the motive is consistent with a terrorist act is different from due process in determination of the person’s guilt, and the how that person;s mental state would affect legal proceedings. If there is sufficient evidence that it is a terrorist act, it should be called that. I can imagine circumstances where it would be justified in calling something a terrorist act, but the person’s mental state is such that it would be a mitigating factor in court.
Keith G
@jl:
I completely agree.
My statements above were in part inspired by comments I have read which seem to suppose a high degree of certainty in a course of events that is still ill-defined.
Demanding/urging that a criminal act such as this be called an act of terrorism before we know if the elements of this act meet the criteria of the crime of terrorism is, I think, unwise.
? Martin
So why won’t elected Republicans call this radical Christian terrorism?
Keith G
Sigh
Satby
@Keith G: Maybe Martin’s point is that the careful analysis of intent that you wish to see applied here is never applied to other than white guys. The insistent demands that every Muslim in the U.S. apologize, and that the President, and all Democrats running for office anywhere call similar attacks “Islamic terrorism” start before the bodies are cool.
Keith G
@Satby: Yeah, I get that, but that is expecting a group to behave better than their distinguishing characteristic. I very seldom take the time to note that a dog is peeing in the grass.
Nor, do consider it valuable to emulate the miss deeds of the other side. Some of them seem so emotionally childlike and since we all are now able to “live” in self-selected echo chambers, I am not confident of immediate improvement.
low-tech cyclist
Yes, this is terrorism. And the masked guy in Texas who was following Muslims around with a gun in his hands, and posting their names on the Web, he is a terrorist too.
There’s a growing cohort on the right – I wish I could say it was a fringe, but I’m afraid it’s not – who clearly believe that threatening people with guns, and perhaps killing them, is the way to ‘take back America’ from all us liberal bad guys.
Gun control has to become a political issue once more, as they are using gun violence and the threat of it as a political weapon. That has to be out of bounds in a democratic society.
debbie
@? Martin:
Heaven forfend.
I remember Christian mouthpieces trying to explain Dylan Root’s sitting quietly for an hour before shooting up the Bible study group as, “He was clearly having second thoughts.”
Grung_e_Gene
We need to be demanding the Republican Congress investigate this at least as thoroughly as they have Benghazi and Planned Parenthood. 3 brave Americans died in a terror attack are they not worthy of attention? Are their families not worthy of the answers the Republicans claim they are seeking?
Grung_e_Gene
Call your Congressman, email him/her repeatedly. We need to demand the Republican Congress investigate this at least as thoroughly as they have Benghazi and Planned Parenthood. 3 Brave Americans died in a terror attack. Their families deserve no less than any other American to understand why.
jl
” When I say we should politicize this I mean the following: ”
Also, I don’t think Democrats, or anyone interested in solving problems instead of creating them or preserving them for narrow partisan gain, should admit to politicizing anything or even use metaphors that can suggest it.
It is the reactionaries who have been politicizing issue after issue. Certainly including abortion, reproductive rights and women’s health care, and health care reform.
Another Holocene Human
@Amir Khalid: who shot a dog. A dog! In America!
But he’s washed in the blood of the fetus now.
Zinsky
I see several conservative dirtbags on Facebook are saying this disheveled lunatic was a “liberal” because he apparently misidentified himself as a female on his voter registration form. These vile vermin will resort to any sort of idiotic excuse to deflect blame from their own idiotic medieval beliefs as the predicate cause of all of this violence against unarmed, innocent victims. Gutless, stupid idiotic degenerates that they are…..
Another Holocene Human
@jl: Or if they were unstable and not very bright lefties entrapped by an FBI provocateur. The press calls that a “terrorist plot” with no hesitation.
Another Holocene Human
@Zinsky: In fact it has to be a clerical error as most states make you go through enormous gyrations to change your sex on your official documents.
http://www.tsroadmap.com/reality/drivers-license.html
Note information for Colorado.
Patricia Kayden
@Keith G: The killer said, “No more baby parts”. What more would he have to say for you to understand that this was terrorism against Planned Parenthood? Does he have to say, “I’m doing this to terrorize women to stop them from exercising their reproductive rights”?
Dear is a domestic terrorist no different from the terrorist who killed Dr. Tiller whom O’Reilly enthusiastically demonized.
Starfish
When are they going to change the loner part of his statement? From what the papers are saying, this man had been married 20 years and had children. He was living in a trailer with his girlfriend and his dogs. Why is the media building his insanity defense for him?
planetjanet
@jl: Terrorism and mentally disturbed are not mutually exclusive. Why do you try so hard to not see terrorism. He was not there to bring Christmas joy.
delk
@Zinsky: There has been a series of obvious trolls that popped up on a LGBT blog that has been repeating the whole “registered democrat who self identifies as female” crap. Prior to that, the obvious trolls were arguing that this was an attempt to confiscate guns.
Funny how they just crawl out of the woodwork.
Calouste
@Starfish: He is white. White murderers are either doing it in self-defense or they have mental issue (besides the obvious one of wanting to own guns.
Just as blacks are criminals and Muslims are terrorists.
Remember a while back how someone made comparisons and in news reports black victims of police murder were actually depicted in a worse light in the press than white mass murderers?
scav
@Zinsky: maybe because only liberals see women as people that have need of separate id? In the good old days, women and children didn’t even necessarily have citizenship in their own right.
Another Holocene Human
@scav: Old passports were issued to men with their “dependents” listed on it. Creepy.
Patrick
@Calouste:
It reminds me of that terrorist who killed 84 people in Norway. His attorneys tried to explain it away by him being mentally unstable. Then one of the fathers to one of the victim’s spoke up. He was a Muslim immigrant. He asked why it is always terrorism when a Muslim does it, but never terrorism and always “mentally unstable” when a non-Muslim does it.
Another Holocene Human
@Calouste: And here comes another round of claiming that sociopathy or psychopathy or narcissistic personality disorder or malignant narcissism with a high degree of sadism are the same as “mental illness” rather than being personality disorders, thus continuing to stigmatize people with schizophrenia, mood disorders (anxiety, depression, bipolar disorders), psychosis, PTSD, OCD, various delusional disorders, and so on.
This guy was a cruel, sadistic fuck who just barely managed to stay on this side of the law. No, Carly, you don’t get to say he was “mentally ill”. Maybe gullible enough to think that enough others would approve of his violence that he would effectively get away with it (it’s clear that violence is something he dearly wished to inflict, as long as there was little risk of harm to himself). Gullible–but not mentally ill.
Of course, mentally ill people sometimes also take messages from irresponsible politicians blasting out irresponsible messages. That’s how stochastic terrorism omelette is made.
c u n d gulag
“… no more baby parts…”
Maybe he was talking about what he was going to give up for Lent?
Another Holocene Human
@Calouste: Saw a tweet pic today comparing FB news page comments. Pretty sick stuff. (From with/in last 18 months.)
planetjanet
@planetjanet: sorry @jl. My comment was directed at @KeithG. I am starting to see cries of “mentally disturbed individual” in the same light as “all lives matter”. Refusal to see a problem that does not affect them personally and don’t think everybody else should get all worked up about it.
Another Holocene Human
@Starfish: I think it’s actually just laziness.
Another Holocene Human
Great, I posted a link about how to change your sex (for transgender people) on your driver’s license and FYWP decided it was spam. Dammit!
Anyway, in CO you have to go to the DMV to file a special form, can’t do it online. Other states make you change your SSC and birth certificate first (not an easy lift). So that really puts the weight on “clerical error”.
Another Holocene Human
OTOH, for the filing under wrong sex thing it could be a sovereign citizen gambit or some sort of MRA moon logic thing. Just sayin’.
Villago Delenda Est
Those who express sympathy toward this criminal are no different than anyone who expresses sympathy towards Daesh.
Treat them thusly. Terrorism is terrorism, and forced birthers engage in textbook terrorism. They must be brought down every bit as much as Al Qaeda, Daesh, the Red Army Fraktion, or the KKK.
Glidwrith
@Starfish: The killer also had very little money. I understand he was living without running water or electricity? Exactly how, then, did he find the funds for an airline ticket? He couldn’t have brought an arsenal with him, so where did the cash come from to purchase ammo and guns? If he was inspired by the antiPP videos, where could he have seen them? Local library? Description in newspaper? Or with a specific group of people in the area?
I would be looking very hard at the money trail. That this killer just happened to wash up in Colorado Springs screams that there may be a network behind him. Army of God has done this kind of MO before.
thefax
@Glidwrith: good points, and I hope they follow up on this. In a not-unrelated note, it’s always galled me that there’s never been a serious investigation into who helped Eric Rudolph while he was on the run.
Starfish
@Glidwrith: I have not confirmed this, but people were saying he was from one of the Carolinas perhaps because he owned property there? At the time of this incident, he was living in Harstel, Colorado. The Gazette has some videos of his trailer and some discussion with some of his neighbors.
karen marie
@Glidwrith: Someone, I think at Wonkette, said they only get broadcast channels, comprised mainly of religious channels, and they broadcast the anti-PP videos on a loop.
Oatler.
@? Martin: Hell, I already know what the collaborators call it. Why won’t the MSM? As I type this Chuck Todd is discussing with Hugh Hewitt whether Trump is more honest than Clinton.
JGabriel
@Debbie(aussie):
Well, they’re expressing empathy. It’s just that they apparently empathize with men who invade women’s health clinics and shoot them.
I’m guessing the reporter must be a Republican.
Glidwrith
@Starfish: I read the NY Times article. Killer had a history of harassing neighbors and stalking people. He had an online presence, complete with wanting BDSM partners (not that BDSM is necessarily bad if consented to, but something an abusive SOB would do without understanding the culture). I’m willing to bet there is a whole sewage plant of commentary he had posted of violent actions. That answers the question of where he would have seen video and that he probably had a whole community of people validating him and egging him on.
He had been living in Colorado but judging from the hovels he had been living in NC, one still has to ask how he could afford the move, the new RV and guns. I didn’t think an online art dealer would make that much of a living marketing reprints of rural art.
debbie
@JGabriel:
I wonder if the Public Editor will have an opinion on that?
low-tech cyclist
@jl:
No, politicizing things that shouldn’t be political is bad. Politicizing routine Presidential appointments is bad, because it’s nothing but a way of throwing sand in the gears of government. Politicizing access to birth control is bad, because damn near everyone agrees that access to birth control is a Good Thing.
But the flip side: in the post-WWII era, civil rights activists, most notably MLK Jr., politicized the issue of civil rights. That was good – it raised it from a non-issue to a political issue. In the late 1960s, politicizing the Vietnam War was good. Even though it didn’t succeed in ending the war any earlier, it had the potential for doing so, and certainly didn’t lengthen it at all. Politicizing net neutrality is good, because if that hadn’t happened, we probably would no longer have a neutral Web. Politicizing the Keystone XL pipeline killed it, and having politicized the TPP may succeed in killing that, too.
Politicizing is how you turn something that’s not a political issue into a political issue. Whether it’s good or bad depends on what’s being politicized. If something should damn well be more of an issue than it is, we shouldn’t be the least bit reluctant to politicize it.
Kathleen
@Debbie(aussie): I saw that. “Gentle” except for the lashing out violently at women and neighbors thing. Maybe the Times is going after the “White People With Delicate Feelings” demographic.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Anne Laurie:
,.. “as in someone who can fight back, you know, people”
Damn, the shooter sounds like a half dozen guys I know on the internet.
Villago Delenda Est
@JGabriel: They’ll show empathy to the theofascists, but not to the sluts who deserve to be punished.
“Liberal media” my ass.
Heliopause
Seems to me that if your garden variety psycho is hearing voice commands to kill randomly then a PP clinic shouldn’t appear on his top 100 targets list. Even nuts have an internal logic.
Greg
So today Rod Dreher, that most sanctimonious and pious POS True Believer, has stated that the gunman just reacted to the “fact” that PP was harvesting and selling organs from dead babies and in no way shape or form is that a reason to condemn the people who have simply reported this “fact”. Rod Dreher has once again proven that he is nothing more than a mouthpiece for “Christians can do no wrong and are always right about everything always. Oh, and Christians are being persecuted and oppressed so we deserve special “rights” that allow us to lie, cheat, steal, refuse to work, etc. Because Christians are the bestest ever.”
Ruckus
I don’t see a difference in types of acts or the mental health of the terrorist controlling the use of the word terrorism. We have a definition of terrorism. If an act goes after a lawful group, it is terrorism, as it is inflicted to bring control or elimination to the group that has a right to exist. That the person committing the act is insane or not, the act is still terrorism. If against one person it is still a criminal act and may be done to incite terror in that one person but that isn’t terrorism.
Not using the word correctly has allowed the right to fend off responsibility for it’s rhetoric about abortion, blacks, women guns, et al. The current GOP and it’s candidates for president are terrorists. They could care less about legality and actual morality, they want to impose their will on everyone and have been inciting people to follow them and act upon their willingness to ignore legality for 30-40+ yrs now.
RaflW
@low-tech cyclist: There’s a growing cohort on the right – I wish I could say it was a fringe, but I’m afraid it’s not – who clearly believe that threatening people with guns, and perhaps killing them, is the way to ‘take back America’ from all us liberal bad guys.
Indeed, this is what the three white guys accused of shooting five #BLM activists in Minneapolis a few days ago were most likely believing as well. They mistook a small, cramped and nasty corner of RW rhetoric as the mood of the country.
Justice must be done according to our established laws, but justice must come without delay.
Gretchen
Rod Dreher over at American Conservative has been called on his over-the-top writing on the subject (Brunch with Dr. Mengele, for example) . His response is that he just calls murder murder, he’s not responsible for what anyone else does with it.
Gretchen
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-colorado-springs-killer-garrett-swasey-robert-lewis-dear/#post-comments
Gretchen
@Greg: I’m glad to hear somebody else hate-reads Dreher. I keep trying to stop for the sake of my blood pressure, but keep finding myself there checking for what whining self-pity “Christians under assault” or “the world is going to hell because sex and not enough religion” he’s got going on today.
Just Some Fuckhead
I just checked the rules book and apparently it is supposed to be called Radical Christianity or you aren’t serious about defeating it.