"Yet they fail to understand that this will appear to conservatives as an attempt"

"...to use the emotion of the moment to stigmatize them. The mania of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party must be dealt with on their own terms."

With some caveats, this sounds about right, I think. Let's be clear: Neither Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity, any conservative talker you can name, the Tea Party, or whatever, can be blamed for this act of violent horror. The problem of our toxic political discourse is real and frankly, distinct from this. Both sides, and this secnario is no different, have a rather tragic tendency to try and score political points on this tragedies, and it's wrong. The Left has done it, and it's wrong. The Right has done it, and it's wrong. Besides the fact that Loughner's ideological leanings appear to be a incoherent mess of nihilistic, antigovernment rage, I don't think the lack of Sarah Palin's map, or the DNC's map, or Kos's map, or Obama's inapt Untouchables reference would have stopped this guy.

More on this later. I'll ger pushback here, but I think Chait is right on this:

Now, I do believe there is a problem with the current political moment. Both extremes of the political spectrum can embrace apocalyptic thinking and rejection of the democratic process. The left-wing version came to the fore during the 1960s, but it is tiny and almost completely disconnected from Democratic politics. The right-wing version, on the other hand, is drawing ever more tightly into an embrace with putatively respectable Republican politics. Since the closing stages of the 2008 election, conservatives have regularly described President Obama as an alien figure and his policies a fundamental threat to American liberty. It has become normal for conservatives to hint that they will take up arms if they don't get their way politically -- a violation of the cultural norm of respecting democratic outcomes that forms the basis for the stability of our political system. Sharron Angle, not just a fringe activist but the GOP's candidate in a major Senate race, rhetorically flirted with outright sedition, and Republicans paid no attention to this, because they wanted to beat Harry Reid.

Oh, and by the way, I freely admit that as the Right has taken it to the next level under OBama, the Left did many of the same things under Bush. I could get into a discussion of who is worse, but that would be fruitless at this point.

What Happens When Burned Out Leftists at Berkeley Meet To Discuss The Tea Party?

It gets weird real quick:

"There is that U.S. DNA that goes all the way back and does provide the conceptual source for this lynch mob mentality," says Steve Martinot, who teaches at San Francisco State University. "And that is white supremacy. Shouldn't we be looking at the Tea Party through that?"

Perlstein moves around the question. "The thing that makes America different, and this is a very dialectical, paradoxical concept, is that we have a lot of democracy," he says. "The idea that everyone has an opinion of about what they're hearing is both the glory and the tragedy of American democracy."

And this one:

"I wonder if we're likely to see a Timothy McVeigh situation," says Nicholas Robert, an attendee originally from Australia, who basically wonders if any Tea Partiers can be arrested. "It seems to be that we're being very polite. I wonder if there are any legal mechanisms—one that comes to mind are the provisions used to crush the Wobblies."

He gets no sympathy from the academics. "I think that's a dangerous road to go down," says Berlet.

Abramowitz finds me and whispers into my ear. "In Berkeley," he says, "you're seeing the other side of polarization."

Yeah. Sheesh. I mean, I said this before, but sometimes people just bring heat on themselves. This reads like an Onion article, I swear.

"They are apocalyptic pessimists about public life and childlike optimists swaddled in self-esteem when it comes to their own powers. "

Via this excellent BHTV diavlog comes a link to this must-read piece on the underlying mindset of the Tea Parties, and the modern conservative movement, by Mark Lilla:

Now an angry group of Americans wants to be freer still—free from government agencies that protect their health, wealth, and well-being; free from problems and policies too difficult to understand; free from parties and coalitions; free from experts who think they know better than they do; free from politicians who don’t talk or look like they do (and Barack Obama certainly doesn’t). They want to say what they have to say without fear of contradiction, and then hear someone on television tell them they’re right. They don’t want the rule of the people, though that’s what they say. They want to be people without rules—and, who knows, they may succeed. This is America, where wishes come true. And where no one remembers the adage “Beware what you wish for.”

Read the whole thing. The way I see it, it's as if they want freedom, for free. Freedom to criticize, free of criticism. Freedom from hard choices. Freedom from expertise. Freedom from the real world. It's as if they say, "give my liberty, and as for the rest of you..."

The anger is real, and a lot of it has to do with real frustration over real crises. Blaming the government, the media, Obama, the Democrats, etc, is easy. Trying to maintain coherence by railing against government, and cuts in Medicare at the same time, is hard. Coming up with solutions is hard. It's one thing to want to be free, but freedom is hard.

Happy Memorial Day, and in which we honor our bravest men and women, who've paid the ultimate price for freedom, and continue to pay it every day.