WaPo reports:
A team of 250 federal investigators and 130 local detectives trying to understand why Jared Lee Loughner went on his alleged killing spree has conducted more than 300 interviews with family, friends and neighbors since the shooting. But they remain stumped about what ultimately prompted the 22-year-old’s descent into violence.
That’s easy: Just ask Paul Krugman. Or Frank Rich. Or Keith Olbermann. Or Michael Moore. Or Jane Fonda. Or Kos. Or…
To quote the DC Morning (which you should sign up to receive because it’s good): “You’d think that if it were ‘heated rhetoric’ or ‘aggro campaign maps’ or ‘hate floating in the air like spirit smog’ that inspired Loughner, somebody would’ve found something by now, right? Right?” Ahh, but there’s that word again: “Think.” You’re not supposed to do that. These media narratives start to fall apart when you do that. Knock it off already. 56% of Democrats have.
Isn’t it interesting that it’s still an “alleged” killing spree, even though there was nothing “alleged” about the “fact” that Loughner was a teabagger? Facts are important except when they’re not.
Well, you can add one suspect to the list, courtesy of Byron York. He reports on an Internet “documentary” called Zeitgeist, which Loughner was obsessed with. (Emphasis mine.)
“Zeitgeist” has three parts. The first tells us that Christianity is a myth, and that religion in general conditions us to believe other myths. The second tells us that the most powerful of those other myths is 9/11 — we call it an act of terrorism when it fact it was an inside job perpetrated by the U.S. government. And the third part tells us the real powers behind 9/11 and the other myths are central bankers. They’re making the myths for money, while we’re just being duped.
“Christianity, along with all other related theologies, is an historical fraud,” the narration begins. “Zeitgeist” posits a sort of Zodiac-based foundation for all faiths and gives us insights like, “Jesus’ solar Piscean personification will end when the sun enters the Age of Aquarius.”
But religion is much more than astrological musings. “It empowers the political establishment who have been using the myth to manipulate and control societies,” the movie claims. “The religious myth … serves as the psychological soil upon which other myths can flourish.” And anyone who questions the myth will pay a price. “The keepers of the faith won’t enter into debate with [critics],” the narrator says. “They ignore them or denounce them as blasphemers.”
At that moment, “Zeitgeist” turns to — of all people — Washington pundit Tucker Carlson to pivot from the Christianity myth to the Sept. 11 myth. Interviewing a 9/11 skeptic on MSNBC in 2006, Carlson said, “It is wrong, blasphemous, and sinful for you to suggest, imply, or help other people come to the conclusion that the U.S. government killed 3,000 of its own citizens.”
To the makers of “Zeitgeist,” that is an “Aha!” moment: a skeptic being literally denounced as a blasphemer. From there, the movie recounts standard 9/11 truther stuff, like claiming plane crashes alone could not have brought down the World Trade Center towers.
That’s your cue, Charles Barkley.
Meanwhile, Matt Labash contributes to the continuing search for a patsy:
Generally speaking in these situations, I prefer blaming the shooter, since ten out of ten times, he’s the one with the gun who did all the killing. Of course, in the punditry racket, you’re not allowed to say something so blatantly obvious. Because if it is that obvious, the story ends, and everyone has to go back to covering the debt ceiling. (Just try making that interesting…)
So if I have to be a dutiful pundit, in order to not get my punditry card revoked, if I have to tack politically-motivated blame for the shooting on someone besides the shooter, I’m going to pin the tail on…
You’ll just have to read the rest.
And finally, the second-craziest man in Tucson is sorry for that silly little death threat. CNN:
Arizona shooting victim James Eric Fuller sent his apologies Monday for telling a Tea Party leader, “you are dead…”
“I would like to tender my sincerest apologies to Mr. (Trent) Humphries for my misplaced outrage on Saturday at the St. Odelia’s town meeting,” Fuller said in the statement. “It was not in the spirit of our allegiance and warm feelings to each other as citizens of our great country.”
That’s nice. Hey, did you know that Fuller has a long history of violent behavior? Our friends on the left really need to do a better job of vetting their champions. Especially if they want to lecture the rest of us on civility, despite the fact that free speech had nothing to do with a madman’s killing spree. I know, I know, nitpicky details…
P.S. Nick Gillespie: The Giffords shooting, as only a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist could render it.