The Riot Act

By Capt. Fogg

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

-- Ann Coulter

____________

We've been hearing about the dangers of song lyrics and video games for decades and of course there's some statistical correlation, according to some researchers, between constant exposure and violent behavior. Why is it then that we're not hearing about the effects of the unrelenting barrage of furious denunciations of the various straw men set ablaze by the religious right and the political right? Why aren't we concerned about the effect on Jim Adkisson?

Dubious denunciation has been around since the Biblical prophets, but we've certainly outgrown hand copied parchment scrolls as the medium. We have blogs, we have newspapers, newsletters, e-mail; we have radio broadcasts, we have 24 hour opinion shouting by people like Michelle Malkin, Anne Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and others. Anger, hate, and bigotry can be spread faster than Smallpox and we have enough angry opinion to drown out reality. For some men like Adkisson, it's been enough to push him into domestic terrorism.

So when Jim Adkisson, an unemployed truck driver, killed two people and wounded six others with a homemade and illegal sawed off shotgun at a Tennessee church last summer, it was because he hated the "liberals" he perceived as infesting the Unitarian Church. He still hates them so much that he smiled as he entered a guilty plea yesterday and was sentenced to life without parole.

So when Ann Coulter, for instance, proclaims a "fatwa" against liberals and blames everything from 9/11 to the current failure of Republican economic policy on "treasonous" liberals in her hysterical and incessant way, when she advocates the poisoning of federal judges and armed assault on Islamic countries, when the American public sits mesmerized in front of Fox News and its endless fantasies about "terrorist fist bumps" and sneering, condescending and fictitious stories about "liberals" conspiring against us all, perhaps it's time we remember the Riot Act. Perhaps it's time we saw these wealthy commercial hatemongers in the same light as we see the bearded boogeymen from Afghanistan who incite people to blow up infidels.

At least Jim Adkisson admitted his motives, even if he has no remorse.

(Cross posted from Human Voices.)