Still getting my thoughts together on a lot of this, but I keep hearing about how he was just a lone crazy dude, and it was a tragedy, that there's no evidence it was politically motivated, etc. So, just a couple of things:
1. Having a mental illness does not mean a person is more likely to be violent. You are not a psychologist, Mr. Political Pundit or Ms. Lady on Twitter. You should not make diagnoses. Sometimes people with mental illness are violent, but it's because they are people and people are sometimes violent.
2. People with mental illness live in the same society as people without mental illness. They take part in the same political process, live in the same social structure, and are exposed to the same media. To behave as though someone with mental illness could not be reacting to hir environment is just ludicrous.
3. I wonder how different this conversation would be if instead of Jared Lee Loughner, the terrorist's name was Muhammad. Like, would the media actually refer to him as a terrorist? Because that's what he was.
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