Friday, March 5, 2010

Leftist Loon Truther Targets Pentagon

Bright, articulate, on-target. Here's what Zombie sez:

On Thursday, a “9/11 Truth” fanatic named John Patrick Bedell started shooting
at the Pentagon
and managed to wound two guards before they mercifully put
him out of our misery. We now know that the guy thought the government and the Bush family were behind the 9/11 attacks (or “demolitions” as he called them), and was basically frothing at the mouth with Bush hatred.

Now, I’ve been to innumerable “Truther” rallies over the last 8 years, and can say with some confidence that about 98% of folks who think 9/11 was a hoax are left-wingers, or at the very least fit in very comfortably in the left-wing milieu, since the
impetus behind Truthism is to undermine the basis for Bush’s “War on Terror,” an
impetus which is also a cornerstone of modern Leftist thought as well.

So far, however, I’ve noticed a deafening quietude on the left-leaning
blogs about this guy’s affiliations and belief systems. Those brave enough to
troll leftist comments sections have noted mumblings therein that the guy was
probably a secret “teabagger,” despite all evidence to the contrary.

Compare this to the response in the leftosphere when Joseph Stack flew
his plane into an Austin IRS building
a couple weeks earlier. Despite
leaving a suicide note that approvingly cited Karl Marx and that condemned
capitalism as nothing but “greed,” he was pilloried by every left-leaning site
as a right-wing hitman who epitomized the inherent violence of the Tea Party
movement — because he had anti-government feelings.

Now, just for a moment, let’s set aside the false guilt-by-association game
everyone’s always playing. We all know that John Patrick Bedell and Joseph Stack
are basically insane, plain and simple — as are any number of similar whackjobs
who periodically go loco and erupt into violence. Violent psychopaths often
incorporate some seemingly random overarching theme into their mindset, and on
occasion that theme involves politics. Whenever someone like Bedell or Stack
goes ballistic, every pundit jumps into the fray and tries to spin the outburst
as “exemplifying” the political viewpoint of those with whom the pundit
disagrees.

But that only rises to the level of a valid argument when a distinct
pattern emerges. If, say, 5,000 suicide bombers in a row are invariably Islamic
fundamentalists — well, OK, we’ve got a problem with the belief system, not just
with the individuals. Yet I don’t see a pattern in these “going postal” violent
outbursts which seem to happen perhaps three or four times per year, every year,
no matter who’s in power or who’s president: it seems that the “philosophy” (if
you can even call it that) of each of the attackers is unique, idiosyncratic and
just plain illogical. Even so, if he starts shooting or killing when a
Republican is president, he is deemed a left-wing psycho (see: Charles Manson);
if he starts shooting or killing when a Democrat is president, he is deemed a
right-wing psycho (see: Joseph Stack). But the truth is, paranoid people simply
feel threatened by the external power structure in general, so they lash out at
any symbol of authority, regardless of its political affiliation.

So, instead of playing the blame game so unapologetically employed by the
Left when they feel they can spin things to their political advantage, I’m not
going to say that Bedell’s actions at the Pentagon epitomize the leftist
worldview. Rather, he was just crazy, as clearly indicated by his belief in the
craziest of modern crazy conspiracy theories, 9/11 Truthism.

Are most Truthers leftists? Yes. But that doesn’t mean that all
left-leaning Americans are thereby just as crazy as the most extreme among them;
it simply indicates that when a leftist goes crazy in the post-9/11 era, he
often gloms onto Truthism as his paranoia of choice.

Put it this way: Leftism fails as a coherent philosophy on its own terms. We shouldn’t try to wring significance from the delusional outburst of someone who just happened to be leftist. There are plenty of ways to logically disembowel Marxism and its numerous noxious contemporary offspring without having to resort to an unnecessary round of political “gotcha!”


Yeah, but somewhere there will always be a delusional loon trying to wring him or her-self as significant. And knowledgeable. And "right."

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