Oh God. This is sickening.

[ellid]

The man who walked into a Unitarian Universalist church in Tennessee was a self-professed "Confederate" who decided to shoot up that particular congregation because he hated liberals and thought they were destroying the country.

So instead of trying assassinate Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Kathi Pollitt, Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Robert Reich, James Carville, Harry Reid, or any other liberal political leader, he walked into a church during a children's service and started firing.

Dear God, what have we come to?

Comments

[ladyaelfwynn.livejournal.com]

I hope he gets a psychiatric evaluation because it wouldn't surprise me if there are some serious mental health issues going on.

It'll be interesting to see how the authors of those books deal with this. I can't help but be reminded of the various rock bands that have been blamed for various acts of violence/suicide because the person who committed them had a huge collection of their albums/had been listening to that song just before they committed whatever.

People like Michael Savage (wasn't he the idiot that last week was saying autistic kids were coddled and just needed discipline?), Bill O'Really, et al. like to stir up trouble. I wonder what they'll do now that someone's gone and done something other than froth at the mouth?

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

This is really disturbing.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Best guess: "Oh, it's not OUR fault some nutcase took our jokes seriously. Ha ha ha."

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

But we're the ones destroying the country.... riiiiiiiiiiiight. Sick fuck. I hope he gets locked in a mental facility for the rest of his life. Or, better yet, maybe he'll fail the insanity defense somehow and actually get thrown in prison.

[rwday.livejournal.com]

And what amazes me is that this guy has been seriously hurt by the policies of the current administration. He can't find a job, probably because all the good blue collar jobs in his area have been outsourced to China or Mexico, his food stamps have been cut because conservatives don't really believe in that sort of thing, and besides, all the money that might have been used for social spending has gone into the war. And he blames liberals.

This is the end result of hate radio, I think.

[rwday.livejournal.com]

Yes, and if you ask Savage or Hannity or that ilk, rock music lyrics, violent video games, Beavis & Butthead and Jackass all cause people to behave badly, but listening to 10 hours a day of right wing radio where host after host slams liberals as the worst thing since Satan? No impact at all.

[juliannajoyful.livejournal.com]

He can't find a job, probably because all the good blue collar jobs in his area have been outsourced to China or Mexico,

In Michigan, most of that got very bad under NAFTA, however Knoxville is different. East TN is coal mining area. They've always been depressed and had few jobs. The last time the Tenesseee Valley had a huge amount of jobs Oak Ridge was new and people were okay with nuclear facilities in their backyard. The biggest employer before that? The WPA Projects Administration's Norris Dam Project.

his food stamps have been cut because conservatives don't really believe in that sort of thing,

Probably because a significant amount of people live on some kind of welfare in that area and it seemed more important to provide families and not single men with food stamps. Tennessee isn't a rich state--it lives by state taxes alone. It can only float so much. And the govenor who would have approved the changes to the food stamp laws is a Democrat, decidedly more liberal than a conservative.

I realize that you all would would like this to prove that conservatives are terrible people who need to shut up, but you're doing this with little to no information on the area and the people involved. It's kind of sickening to watch people dance on the graves of the dead just to be able to say "Conservatives are responsible."

[lady-jade-01.livejournal.com]

Don't forget about the listening to the song backwards for the "hidden messages"

[rwday.livejournal.com]

I don't want to prove that all conservatives are terrible people. My husband is conservative (though libertarian leaning) and much of my extended family is conservative fundamentalist Christian, so while I will grant you that you obviously have more information on the economic history of Tennessee than I do, you have zero information on where I'm coming from, so I don't really appreciate your attempt to ascribe motivations to me that don't exist.

However. In general, social programs are more supported by liberals than conservatives. And while job loss can be ascribed to both sides of the political aisle, you see a stronger sense of compassion (IMO) towards those who are going through it from the left than from the right. Obviously, none of that justifies physical attack on either liberals or conservatives, and I wasn't attempting to say that it did.

The point I was attempting to make (obviously unsuccessfully) was that the killer's stated motivation didn't make sense. I don't think it's 'dancing on the graves of the dead' to try and understand what drove this man to his actions.

[tena524.livejournal.com]

The good news is insanity defenses rarely work, and have very little to do with whether or not the perpetrator is actually a nut job, just if they can understand what they did at the time. Basically, you can be a diagnosed whatever, but as long as you understand that (___fill in the blank crime___) is wrong, you're still held responsible for your actions.

We had a murder case recently up here in NH that hinged on such a defense - guilty verdict came in remarkably swiftly. Jury took just long enough to order and eat lunch.

[persevero.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the political rhetoric, and the availability of guns, in the States simply directs people who would be potty anyway towards this kind of manifestation - right-wing extremism doesn't cause it, but merely gives it a target. Or just provides people with an explanation to give themselves - there's no logic to identifying a children's service as a liberal target. There's probably a PhD or three to be had from a consideration of the typical way in which people of different cultures and periods of history go off the rails - world domination, witch-hunts, Columbine, Dunblane.

[juliannajoyful.livejournal.com]

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/jul/29/friends-suspect-had-two-sides/

Evidently, his ex-wife attended this church towards the end of his marriage. While he probably wasn't shooting for her, he didn't turn uo there as randomly as it appears.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

Even worse...there are a couple of eyewitness accounts of the shooting linked in the chalice_circle community. Evidently he first tried to get into the church through the side entrance to the stage where the children were performing.

*shudders*

[juliannajoyful.livejournal.com]

I read about that earlier today. I have friends that were present and have been following Knoxville news carefully. (I lived there for a year and have family in the larger community which is largely conservative & Republican.) It sounds like the Knoxville community has been very good. to the church.