Blaming the Victim, Part xx…

We note, with a certain degree of awe for his chutzpah, that our new commenter Greg has attempted to make the attack on the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church about the failure of the congregants to adequately arm themselves before attending service.

Isn’t it amazing? Consider: Here we have an activist who supports and promotes a local politician who regularly churns out nuggets of hate speech like this:

“Forcing the Boy Scouts to hire homosexuals is the same as being an accessory to the rape of hundreds of boys.”

Understand that there is an entire industry – a good portion of it based in Loudoun County – devoted to producing a constant diet of such ideas. When the consumers of this diet are told over and over that “liberals,” or gay people, or transgender people, or whoever is the target of the moment, are a threat to children, or are destroying the world and must be stopped, it creates what criminologists call a scapegoat mentality. Sooner or later a mentally unbalanced, violence-prone individual like the shooter in this case is going to take those ideas to heart. The only surprising thing is that it hasn’t happened more often.

So – this poor manipulated man finally does what, to his damaged mind, he has been called on to do by these “truth-tellers” like Michael Savage, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity.

“This is not just violence in a vacuum,” says Brian Levin, professor of criminal justice and director of the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. “When they perceive themselves to have played by the rules, they will lash out indiscriminately not just at innocent people, but innocent people who symbolize what they believe has done them wrong.”

I imagine we’ll be hearing more about Mr. Adkisson’s reading list – but given what we know, can there be any doubt that, if he had been living in Loudoun, he would have been Eugene Delgaudio’s Number 1 fan, hanging on every scapegoating word? Let me answer that – no.

That’s quite a trick – promoting the creation of a deranged hunter, then blaming the hunted for failing to adequately protect themselves from that creation.

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3 Responses to Blaming the Victim, Part xx…

  1. gstone says:

    David:

    There are times when I really think you have hit your head on something causing yourself premature dementia.
    This is why no one wants to engage in honest debate with you, you are simply incapable. This is why this site gets as much traffic as it does, very little.

    As usual your playing a game, simply trying to play work link or the cobbling together of subjects and incidents that have no relation other than that they may contain those for whom you dislike. Linking them as many times as you can is pretty transparent.

    So that you are not in a further confused state, here is my take on the tragic incident in Tenn.

    The world would be a much better place had one of
    those members of the church shot and killed this evil man before he had an opportunity to kill or maim innocents. It is he who deserves to be measured for a casket. My larger point, one that escaped you was that this coward and people like him look for these ‘ gun free Zones ‘ because evil cowards don’t like to be challenged. Those afraid of objects such as guns as opposed to the actions of evil men are complicate by supporting gun control and other such silly concepts as opposed to holding people responsible for their actions.
    Why do you think these idiots always pick a Church or a School ? Because we are stupid enough to advertise the fact that no one other than the bad guys will be armed. We advertise our own vulnerability. We promote our own weakness and then wonder why we get victimized.
    No man or woman on Gods green earth has the right to take another persons life other than self defense or defense of family or country.
    This particular man was an evil SOB who should be taking a dirt nap right about now.

    Where are the Pink Pistols when we need them ?

  2. David says:

    Dear, sweet Greg,

    If you could manage to stop being verbally abusive for a moment, maybe we could have a nice conversation. No, your point about churches being a “soft target” didn’t escape me at all. A Unitarian minister addresses it in the “scapegoat mentality” article. My point about where disturbed folks like our shooter get their ideas and inspiration, however, has completely eluded you – of course, because you don’t see a thing wrong with the hateful state of our discourse.

    I’m a huge fan of the Pink Pistols, btw.

  3. David says:

    In addition to the lovely Delgaudio quote above, we see that Ann Coulter says liberals should be beaten with baseball bats and tried for treason; Michael Savage says that he would “hang every lawyer” who opposes his views; Dick Morris calls liberals traitors who should be decapitated; and that doesn’t even begin to explore the explicitly anti-gay, anti-transgender violent hate speech.

    It must take a great deal of effort to fail to see the connection between the constant verbalizing of such violence, and a disturbed individual taking it to heart as Adkisson did.