Mass shooting at LGBT nightclub in Orlando.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The saddest thing about this thread is that the usual played-out arguments about Islam and about gun control and about 'mental illness' (which as we all know is the same thing as both legal insanity and a propensity to violence) would have been emotionally exhausting enough, but instead we have pages and pages of #analysis over whether or not Salafi jihadism is right-wing and at least one poster implicitly demanding that the president use a specific phrase that he would probably be likelier to use if the Republicans hadn't made a shibboleth of it, so the usual played-out arguments are looking awfully good right now in comparison. I only read the first five pages. I don't even want to know where the thread has gone since then.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Using the dead as a rally cry is morally wrong and utterly reprehensible.

Why? Serious question.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What basis is there for assuming that Mateen is mentally ill other than the fact that he killed fifty people? Am I missing something or is it just being deployed as a standard part of The Script?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm asking whether or not there's reason to believe that he is mentally ill, not whether or not there's reason to believe that he was an abusive husband. 'Mentally ill' has a specific meaning, not that you'd know it from the way the concept gets thrown around in mass shooting discourse.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm just appalled by this script that gets trotted out whenever something like this happens that if somebody does something horrible then they must be mentally ill, so clearly some sort of improvements to mental health treatment (which, granted, are necessary, just not necessarily for this reason) would have prevented it. Has the American right seriously talked itself into thinking this way? What happened to personal responsibility for one's actions? What happened to not trusting rationalized institutions like the psychiatric profession to come to all the decisions about people's lives? It's just amazing to me that those philosophical presuppositions are getting contorted to conform to the predetermined reflexively pro-gun Issues stance, rather than letting the Issues stances flow out of the philosophical presuppositions. It shouldn't surprise me but it does. It's the only thing about this whole argument that does any more.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

So when conservatives call out radical Islam, it's their fault, even when they're correct in doing so. Maybe the problem is liberals that are so partisan that they refuse to denounce this just because conservatives did it first.

I mean, when the right makes a specific phrase a political shibboleth and explicitly treats getting Obama to say it as some sort of win condition, of course the left is going to want to avoid giving them that victory.

Nobody on the American right is calling this mental illness. Theyre calling it Islamic terrorism.

I've seen the mental illness talking point trotted out in this thread already, more than once. I've also seen it trotted out literally every other time a mass shooting happens.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm just appalled by this script that gets trotted out whenever something like this happens that if somebody does something horrible then they must be mentally ill, so clearly some sort of improvements to mental health treatment (which, granted, are necessary, just not necessarily for this reason) would have prevented it. Has the American right seriously talked itself into thinking this way? What happened to personal responsibility for one's actions? What happened to not trusting rationalized institutions like the psychiatric profession to come to all the decisions about people's lives? It's just amazing to me that those philosophical presuppositions are getting contorted to conform to the predetermined reflexively pro-gun Issues stance, rather than letting the Issues stances flow out of the philosophical presuppositions. It shouldn't surprise me but it does. It's the only thing about this whole argument that does any more.

Nobody on the American right is calling this mental illness. Theyre calling it Islamic terrorism.

Well, honestly, I consider radical islam a form of mental illness.