The American Right doing paranoia, again

Yesterday I posted that Drudge was going with "prescription drugs" as being the real issue behind the Charleston killings.   I see now from LGF that even Presidential hopeful Rick Perry thinks that's a useful diversion:

It’s stunning to watch the entire conservative movement line up to deflect the conversation about the Charleston church massacre away from the truly relevant issues — racism and guns — to ridiculous disconnected talking points like “religious freedom” and now, thanks to former Texas Governor Rick Perry (one of the many GOP presidential candidates): overuse of prescription drugs.

And that’s not even the worst thing Perry said; in the same interview with Steve Malzberg of Newsmax, he called the attack “an accident.” (One of Perry’s spokesmen quickly put out the word that he simply “misspoke,” of course.)

“This is the MO of this administration, any time there is an accident like this — the president is clear, he doesn’t like for Americans to have guns and so he uses every opportunity, this being another one, to basically go parrot that message,” Perry said.
Instead of talking about guns, Perry said, we should be talking about prescription drugs: “Also, I think there is a real issue to be talked about. It seems to me, again without having all the details about this, that these individuals have been medicated and there may be a real issue in this country from the standpoint of these drugs and how they’re used.”

On the other hand, this is what I heard Obama saying on the radio this morning (my bold):

“We don’t know if it would have prevented what happened in Charleston. No reform can guarantee the elimination of violence. But we might still have some more Americans with us. We might have stopped one shooter. Some families might still be whole.  You all might have to attend fewer funerals.

“And we should be strong enough to acknowledge this. At the very least, we should be able to talk about this issue as citizens, without demonizing all gun owners who are overwhelmingly law-abiding, but also without suggesting that any debate about this involves a wild-eyed plot to take everybody’s guns away.”

Exactly.  It is the pre-emptive paranoia of the American gun loving Right - from even relatively "moderate" right wing sites like Hot Air, to NRA officials, right up to Republican Presidential candidates - which is sickening.

There's a psychological and cultural rot that has taken hold of the American Right in the last two to three decades, poisoning it on matters scientific (climate change), social (gun control) and economic (voodoo economics and libertarian obsession with reducing government), and the rest of the world is waiting for them to wake up to themselves.