Within 20 minutes former FBI profiler & MSNBC expert blamed a crazy person for Boston bombing

[HereSince1628]

Advocates for the mentally ill can pick and choose among what words or stigmatizing phrases really piss them off, but all that verbiage is really nothing compared to the sustained maintenance of prejudicial attitudes against the mentally ill.

Within the hour DUers began speculating...one of the first posts took liberty to blame either Muslims, RW American religious fanatics, or the 'criminally insane'.

DUers quickly jumped into that recreation warning DUers to not be too quick to blame religions or ethnicities for the bombing.

Not so much concern for the mentally ill.

And it's not just pundits or DUers....

This morning in a homage post to members of the Milwaukee Light Brigade who stood in last night's rain with their light sign "We Mourn With Boston", comments of comedian/writer Patton Oswalt were posted as an outstanding example of an empathetic response to Boston bombing. That outstanding example including this rationale for the bombing:

"the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they're pointed towards darkness."

Snarled wiring? Yes, a euphemism for some fantasized mental defect of structure or function.

I do understand the motivations for this. Dead people, horrible pictures of horrible wounds. People ARE upset.

The people need to escape a very tough emotional space. As is typical, attempts to lessen emotional pain will come through constructing and believing in narratives that places 'us' with the good guys, opposed to 'them', the bad guys. So within hours we have the marathon runners elevated to 'the best people in America' and the unknown party that committed the bombing reduced to "the worst people in America" by Al Sharpton and Mike Barnacle.

Thankfully we don't have to guess re to what class those worst people belong. Cliff Van Zandt, nothing less than a former FBI profiler has already used the credibility of that former job to proclaim the person who committed the bombing was a crazy person.

So, I guess I am over-reacting, pissed off by an unusual event.

Well no, not really. This built in default attitude is ubiquitous.

For example, just about an hour before the Boston Bombing, I was listening to Ed Schultz on his radio show. He was lamenting that background check law might not pass the senate.

Big Ed was OK with Assault Weapons ban failing,
he seemed to be ok on allowing high capacity magazines to continue being sold.
What had Eddie's undies in a bundle was the possibility of not getting a law for enhanced background checks.

Why?

Because as Bid Ed stated for himself, he wants better background checks to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill!

You see. It's really not at all about stigmatizing words. It's about prejudicial attitudes, it's about social cues which require being filled in by stigmatizing words. It's about the construction of rationalizing narratives of 'them' that default to the nameless, faceless, dangerous lunatics among us.

It's about the application of that narrative as the rhetoric of national problem solving, the social endorsement and institutionalization of discrimination.

And it's accepted because through it society can have a narrative that like a lullaby, rocks them into peaceful comfort at the end of the news.

[Neoma]

1. *sigh*

Is it just me, or is this type of crap getting worse?

[HereSince1628]

2. It's not getting worse. It's pretty much always been chin deep

The bombing in Boston just made a few waves that are washing the shit up over our noses

[Neoma]

3. Make a post in GD yet about it?

This mental illness = violence attitude is pissing me off something horrible.

[HereSince1628]

4. No, I've merely been posting replies--I'm wondering if ANY pundit or reporter

has managed to publish anything this morning that doesn't default to blaming the crazy, the lone wolf nut, sick minds or snarled wiring.

Oswalts piece is apparently getting wide play on facebook. There have been 4 posts of it since 6 am

[Downwinder]

5. Have to consider the source.

If you have ever dealt with Fan Belt Inspectors you will know what I mean. They have no concept of any other way of thought than their's.

[HereSince1628]

6. It's not just the FBI, it's the way mental illness fits neatly into the narrative

The narrative has to ease our pain and make us secure.

So the narrative will be

The even in Boston is limited in time and space, it's over.
The investigation is in the capable hands of federal, state and local authorities, who will catch the people who did this no matter how long it takes...etc.

The injured are in the hands of our best surgeons, nurses etc.

Then there will be a bunch of stuff that allows "us" to feel good.

The dead and injured were heroes, representatives of the best of America
The first responders were selfless and brave, running toward the sound of the explosions....
The marathon runners and their families represent the best of America.
Our hearts, prayers and thoughts reach out the injured and their families...

The one(s) responsible for this evil act are bad people but you shouldn't blame a religious group, political party, or ethnic group.

The ones responsible were defective in one or more than one way, which clearly makes them other than the good and heroic WE mentioned above.

Pundits will fill in whatever descriptors they want, but being unable to blame religion, politics or ethnic strife, most will fill in with some terminology referring to mental defects....because whenever something happens that can't be immediately understood it must be...well...CRAZY!

An that concept will appear in various forms from soft bigotry like Oswalt's miswired minds through "deranged" which Ed Shultz has used in the past 15 minutes to harsher sounding adjectives.

Members of our society, including people on DU, have no more qualms about employing demeaning discriptors of mental illness to describe the still unknown and undescribable perpetrators of the Boston bombing than Mark Twain had in calling Jim a ni**er in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

[Downwinder]

7. I won't become PC until people

stop taking their Dick to the John. I think Cash had it right with a "Boy Named Sue." I can't be stigmatized because I already am. But, don't call me drunk because of my MS symptoms. Thats practicing medicine without a license and you better be able to back it up.

[HereSince1628]

8. Well, that seriously puts things in their proper perspective.

[olddots]

9. I grew up in Mass.

not too long ago they would have said who ever is responsible must be wicked mental or wicked "retahdid "

their way to deal is to turn their back and stereotype .

[HereSince1628]

10. You know Mass, I don't. I think the problem is more general.

IMO, when we have an anxiety provoking crisis in our society, "we" need to reduce that anxiety, and "we" do that by telling ourselves stories. It's not unlike the soothing stories our parents told us when "we" were kids, because at our caregivers' knee is where "we" learned what is to be and how to model being empathetic and soothing.

As kids "we" were taught life is unfair...bad people can do bad things to good people. "We" are soothed by being told "we" did nothing to deserve this bad, "we" are good people. And so the soothing narrative takes on attributes of the fundamental 'us' vs 'them' conflict foundational to sociology.

"We" empathetic good guys layer on adjectives of goodness about the victims, the 1st responders, the surgeons, the hospitals because all the good helpers are like"we". Just reread Obama's statements about the Boston bombing; whoever wrote those statements laid it on the good attributes very thick.

On the other side of the narrative "we" must distinguish ourselves from "them", the bad people who did this bad thing.

Without any evidence of who the bad people are, "we" are left to fill in the blank, and "we" fill it in with descriptors we have previously judged to be usefully applied to bad people. Pre--judged socially acceptable names...that serve as fillers of the void.
Which is to say, "we" tap prejudice for a supply of nouns, pronouns and adjectives that label the 'them' as bad.

And that is the rub: soothing anxiety in these situations where "we" must guess about the bad guys comes comes down to employing prejudices.

From our early days as children we have learned a lexicon that can be employed when we need to display 'prejudiced loyalty or support for one's own cause or group' (which btw is the very definition of chauvinism--the fancy word for bigotry).

Being tolerant, reasonable, dare I say even liberal adults, "we" know that we shouldn't say prejudicial things about a person's gender or race or ethnicity or religion. Those things get jumped on by others of 'us' and are thereby removed from the narrative.

But "we" REALLY need to make expressions of loyalty and support that distinguish 'us' from the bad 'them'. It's about being a member of the good guys.

What's left among our prejudiced vocabularies to fill in the blank?

Well noun, pronouns, adjectives and other modifiers for bad/criminal persons and those with mental problems who 'we' are prejudiced to believe don't/can't think good thoughts like 'us'.