the tragedy in Tucson, something simple seems to have been missed on this forum. In considering whether certain inflammatory rhetoric would or would not incite mentally disordered people to carry out violent irrational actions, no one seems to have tried to get into the minds of such persons and analyze how the specific words and terms used in verbal attacks can be used by the nutjobs to "justify" those actions.
When a pundit asserts that a politician--or an entire political party--"hates this country" or "is trying to destroy this country" or "does not want this country to succeed," that pundit has made an accusation that implies something pretty awful, something pretty close to treason. In the mind of some nutjob, that creates a rationale, however deranged, for carrying out violence against those who are characterized as the treasonous, unpatriotic enemies of this nation. For example, when National Leader A is compared to Hitler (and I have heard just that one more than once from right wing extremists), said nutjob might just reason that as the world would have been better off if someone had succeeded in killing Hitler, so would the world be better off if someone knocked off National Leader A. In his warped way of viewing the world, said nutjob might, "reason" that just as a killer of Hitler would be a hero, the killer of National Leader A also would be hailed as a hero--the savior of the republic.
Think about it.
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