Wash Times' Tyrrell calls Pentagon shooter "a life-long member of the angry left"
March 12, 2010 6:02 am ET by Media Matters staff
From R. Emmett Tyrrell's March 12 The Washington Times column:
There has been yet another eruption of violence from what our liberal friends a year or so ago were wont to call "the angry left." However, if you read The Washington Post, you might think this recent outburst of violence came from talk radio.
The angry leftist behind the violence was John Patrick Bedell, 36, who, on the evening of March 4, walked up to an entrance of the Pentagon, pulled a gun on two Pentagon guards, Jeffrey Amos and Marvin Carraway, and was fatally shot. Both guards were wounded.
In the aftermath of this attack, it was reported that Bedell was a pot-smoking intellectualoid from California who had left word on the Internet that, according to his findings, a "coup regime" took over Washington at the time of President Kennedy's assassination and has governed the country "up to the present day." What is more, the "coup regime," according to Bedell, was complicit in Sept. 11, 2001. This judgment might strike you as extreme, but apparently it is not, at least not on the left. You will recall that President Obama's recently resigned environmental czar, Van Jones, had signed a petition to this effect before being invited into the administration.
In The Post's report on Bedell's assault - headlined "Pentagon Shooter's Erratic Journey" - a high school classmate recalled: "I remember [Bedell] being a sweet-natured, funny peacenik." Another acquaintance reported to The Post that Bedell was a heavy marijuana user, and elsewhere, one of Bedell's brothers reported that he was a perpetual student who, so far as the brother knew, never held a job while bouncing from campus to campus and developing his esoteric theories. All in all, this glassy-eyed ideologue surely was a man of the left, the infantile left to be sure, but the left.
[...]
Thus John Patrick Bedell, a life-long member of the angry left, gets himself killed while assaulting the Pentagon, and the pious journalists at The Washington Post lump the poor guy in with right-wing militias. It is shoddy journalism. Much worse, it is a shocking act of disrespect for the dead.
Previously:
Boehlert: The Pentagon shooter,
insurrectionism, and right-wing bloggers
How can he be a peace loving dope smoker, AND be a militant angry leftist?
And what does his anti government rhetoric sound like? A government loving leftist (which is how we're typically portrayed) or a tea partying right winger?
This cranky old codger Tyrrell seems confused about the second amendment. He constantly spouts off about how "ANGRY LEFTISTS" are trying to take away our guns... then he claims this nut Bedell, armed to the teeth, is a leftist. Does he not see the paradox? Wipe that tapioca pudding out of your eyes and pick up your thick cheaters Bob, you are seeing things that aren't there.
Or course we can list ANGRY RIGHTIES AD NAUSEUM.
Tim McVeigh (the ultimate baby killer)
Eric Rudolph
Ted the Unabomber (they claimed he was a lefty too)
Randy Weaver
etc etc etc....
Many of the gun toting wingnuts bringing weapons into schools and churches to 'excercise their 2nd Amendment rights' as they rant against the govt.
So who is anti govt in these scenarios? Who rages on and on in spittle bespattered rants daily? Geezers like Tyrrell. Their desperation to get noticed and sell ads is tearing at the fabric of this proud Country.
(Setting aside the absurd assertion that conservatives don't smoke dope, either.)
Whilst this fixation is not the exclusive prerogative of the Right, it seems that in recent times it has been more and more their territory. A possible reason for this is that many on the Left are more optimistic than those on the Right. Obama's appeal to hope is indicative of that. Resort to violence is the opposite of this and betrays a nihilistic streak (a less virulent form of nihilism is the pathological obstructionism of the Congressional Republicans).
I can't recall leftist generated violence in the U.S. in at least the past two decades. Generally the violence has been part and parcel of the anti-government paranoia that seems to be a particularly popular pastime in certain communities in the U.S. Such a world view is hardly the hallmark of an ideology that believes in the role of government in ensuring social justice.
The idea
[blockquote]"a "coup regime" took over Washington at the time of President Kennedy's assassination and has governed the country "up to the present day." What is more, the "coup regime," according to Bedell, was complicit in Sept. 11, 2001."[/blockquote]
is an exact description of the PRISON PLANET/Infowars supporters, particularly those who are also supporters of 'The Texas Doctor' (whose name I never use for fear of summoning his defenders, but whose son is running for Senatoer from Kentucky.)