Damn, Henry Farrell beat me to it. Some time today, I was going to expand on a note I posted on the Facebook page of a friend intent on denying any link between overheated political rhetoric and the Tucson shooting: While Loughner seems to be a psychotic of no recognizable political persuasion, too crazy to have a coherent political grievance against Giffords, inflammatory rhetoric that demonizes the opposition , which has become endemic on the right, probably does increase the likelihood of political violence. Threats against politicians generally are up, and threats against Obama are off the charts. The relationship between the political climate and a given act of violence reminds me a little of the relationship between global warming and a given hurricane: you can't say that the warming caused the particular hurricane or made it worse, but you can infer that due to the warmer climate there will be more violent storms. For evidence of the effect of violent rhetoric, see
Political climate change
Political climate change
Political climate change
Damn, Henry Farrell beat me to it. Some time today, I was going to expand on a note I posted on the Facebook page of a friend intent on denying any link between overheated political rhetoric and the Tucson shooting: While Loughner seems to be a psychotic of no recognizable political persuasion, too crazy to have a coherent political grievance against Giffords, inflammatory rhetoric that demonizes the opposition , which has become endemic on the right, probably does increase the likelihood of political violence. Threats against politicians generally are up, and threats against Obama are off the charts. The relationship between the political climate and a given act of violence reminds me a little of the relationship between global warming and a given hurricane: you can't say that the warming caused the particular hurricane or made it worse, but you can infer that due to the warmer climate there will be more violent storms. For evidence of the effect of violent rhetoric, see