Zandar's Thought Of The Day

Steve M. on the latest politically motivated shooting in the country:

My question is, why does it seem that people who've been angry for a long time, as all of these guys were (von Brunn, I think, has been angry longer than I've been alive, and I'm 50), suddenly turning violent now?

I think it's the atmosphere in the country.

Now, you might say it's the endless recession, but I don't think any of these guys had a recent reversal of fortune -- Stack, for instance, seemed to have been struggling through good times as well as bad. I think it's more the tone of the rhetoric out there, especially the radical, hateful, revolutionary rhetoric that's showing up in mainstream media outlets.

Maybe tea party and Bunning-style GOP rage, broadcast through the powerful Fox and talk radio loudspeakers, isn't making teabaggers violent, and it isn't making moderates and liberals and lefties violent (to varying extents, we're all still hoping some good comes out of Washington, even if our hopes are fading), but it's making people who are off-the-charts wacko more and more inclined to politicized violence. Maybe people who are already riled up are getting even more riled up by the tone of the rhetoric, but, since they don't feel they have a dog in the fight, they just go even crazier, and seek bloodshed.

It's just a theory, but I wish the most overheated folks out there -- the vast majority of whom I think are on the right -- would ponder it.

That's the great thing about the internet:  it allows for venting of endless rage without any real consequences. We forget at times that the rage itself is the problem, and if all you have is rage, you're eventually going to act on it.  Rage sells, folks.  It used to be sex, but the real money?  It's in rage.