As Promised, The Argument

I said in my last post that I could argue that even if Mr. Loughner isn't himself a particular right-winger, there's still a connection between the violent right-wing rhetoric and his political violence. Here's the argument: there are a certain number of crazy people in this world. Paranoid schizophrenics have a well-known tendency to incorporate snippets of news into their delusions. If a large number of right-wingers are talking about how the current government is illegitimate and unconstitutional, how our money system is all foundationless (the locus of his crazy), and how we should exercise our Second Amendment rights to take our country back, some of those crazy people will absorb that rhetoric of violence without actually being a believer in the political agenda. In fact, they might assassinate Republicans. The point is that violent rhetoric creates a culture of violence, even if that violence has no coherent political alignment, and the violent rhetoric is all on the right right now.