Why was Jared Lee Loughner smiling in his mug shot? Why was he smiling just like Thomas Dale Delay was smiling in his mug shot?

We could ask that woman in Alaska whose name I will not speak, but it would be pointless, she’s just as incoherent as Loughner is. But that doesn‘t matter to the corporate media, her fumbling attempts to communicate the jangled thoughts that wander through her mind like strangers in the night are given nationwide attention. And now, in the aftermath of the horror in Arizona, as her complicity in that killing spree stares an entire nation in the face, the corporate media is rushing to defend her, they’re in full damage control mode, they know what‘s expected of them, they know who they work for, they know what they’re expected to say and they’re saying it.

In The Wrath of Fools, William Rivers Pitt lays the blame for the carnage in Arizona right where it belongs. The Teabaggers. Hate speech radio ghouls. Fox News. Reactionary Republicans. The corporate media . They all have blood on their hands, almost as much blood on their hands as that website scrubbing village idiot from Wasilla . . .

Congratulations, you failure, you quitter, you inciter of mobs. You put the cross-hairs on her, and someone finally pulled the trigger. Run from it all you like, Lady MacBeth, but this blood will never be washed from your hands.

You false patriots who bring assault rifles to political rallies, you hack politicians and media personalities who lied through your teeth about “death panels” and “Obama is coming for your guns” and “He isn’t a citizen” and “He’s a secret Muslim” and “Sharia Law is coming to America,” you who spread this bastard gospel and you who swallowed it whole, I am talking to you, because this was your doing just as surely as it was the doing of the deranged damned soul who pulled the trigger. The poison you injected into our culture is deeply culpable for this carnage.

Loughner didn’t lash out blindly at society, he didn’t bring his gun to a former place of employment, or to Pima Community College, or to a mall to kill whoever happened to be there. He went to a political event, he walked directly up to a Democratic congresswomen, and shot her point blank in the head.

So don’t fucking tell me this wasn’t political, don’t fucking tell me the violent rhetoric and seditious threats of Teabaggers and “conservatives” and Republicans and hate speech radio inciters had nothing to do with this. Don’t fucking tell me the corporate media that put those freaks on the air day after day for two years had nothing to do with this.

But they will never accept responsibility. They are incapable of it. Pathological liars infest the Republican Party from top to bottom, the corporate media is a propaganda machine for the psychopaths who own it, the hired hacks working on that Orwellian assembly line know very well who signs their paychecks, they know what’s expected of them and they deliver it. Their job is to protect the deranged, damned establishment, with lies when they’re expected to lie, with silence when they’re expected to be silent, with respectful admiration for the pathological liars of the Right, with condescension and disdain for everyone on the Left.

That’s Obama’s job too, and he damn well knows it.

We have to call them all what they are, we have to be the conscience of this country, we have to be the media, the truth tellers, the voices of the oppressed, the defenders of justice. We don’t need to hear any more lies, we’ve heard enough. We don’t need to see any more corruption, we’ve seen enough. Conservatism no longer a political movement, it’s a Cult. America is no longer a democracy, it’s an Oligarchy. The truth is gunned down every day. By smiling assassins in boardrooms, in media studios, in the halls of power.

Observe a minute of silence about that, Obama.

I’ve heard all the arguments on the Left about what to do, the debate has been endless, a billion words have been spoken, a billion words have been written, a billion more are on the way, but the Left still won’t be able to decide what needs to be done. Well some of us know what needs to be done, we’ve always known what needs to be done.

Justice needs to be done, though the heavens fall.

I’ve said that before.

Many times, in many ways.

I’m going to keep saying it.