I was going to link something about it, but I haven't seen a good enough article for what I wanted to highlight. Basically the situation is still evolving, as more info comes out. Of course, that info is confirming what I had originally suspected and he's a right wing terrorist, one of the many terrorist attacks in recent months on PP facilities. This guy actually managed to kill people. So far politicians have been very politician about it. Nothing terribly inflammatory nor accusatory. Some, especially on the Right, have been avoiding calling it a terrorist attack, but for some reason, somehow, freaking Huckabee called it a terrorist attack?
Yeah, I'd been holding off too but honestly waiting for quality journalism is like waiting for tasty health food. Was tempted to just link to a google search and let people pick their own news source, but didn't want to come across to confrontational by using lmgtfy.
It is interesting how much everybody's shying away from making any real statements about this though. They won't call it a terrorist attack, they won't say whether it was motivated by anti-choice sentiment, etc. It's admirable to wait for the actual facts to come to light like that, but I can't help but recall all the times these same people have instantly assigned a label and motive to other events without a shred of evidence besides their own presumptions.
And I hate that "the situation is still evolving" BS. It's pure political doubletalk. The situation happened. It is not evolving, it's done--past tense. The only thing "evolving" is our understanding of what happened and the various narrative spins that different groups are going to try to put on those facts.
He sounds like a loony who has a long history of both mental illness and conflict with the law. He's had cops called on him for beating his wife, beating his dog, and threatening to beat or kill his neighbors.
He has a long history of calling the law over what neighbors call imaginary vandalism done to his property. Most of them refuse to be interviewed because they're so terrified of him. The picture emerging so far is of a mentally unstable, violent man someone should have stepped in to help years ago, but no one wanted to become involved.
I was getting that vibe from what little I saw too. There's a real problem in this country with stigmatizing mental health problems. People act out because something's wrong and they feel like no one's listening to them, but instead of trying to get them the help they need everybody just ignores it and tries to and avoid them--which just makes the problem worse.
Does he? The first reports I saw were "nothing terribly out of the ordinary, just a loner". I mean, none of that is surprising to me though.
Every notice how that's the first thing you ever hear about people who go on a killing spree? "He was quiet, kept mostly to himself." AKA: Nobody we've interviewed paid much attention to him, and therefore didn't have shit to tell us--but we're going to pretend this means he simply went off with no warning because the idea that a seemingly normal person could be a ticking time bomb scares people and keeping people scared is good for business if you're a reporter or a politician.
The fact is if you dig even a little bit below the surface, you usually find tons of warning signs that something was wrong with the person. It's just that nobody paid attention them until it was too late.
