An email I just wrote to my sister:

So I assume you've read about the Holocaust Museum shooter? I'm just
curious if people in your circles are talking about it at all, and
what they are saying. I keep hearing how this is yet another case of
right-wing extremist violence, but I have a hard time equating a man
who hates Bush, neocons, Israel (which has much higher support on the
right than the left in this country), and thinks socialism is the
future of humanity can be called right-wing? I don't think he could
really be called left-wing either, though his rantings make him seem
more left if you were forced to define him.

But I think that right there is the root of the problem. Everything
in society today has to be looked at in terms of its group
identification. Why can't the guy just be crazy, why do we have to
say he did it because of some group we decide he was associated with?
Than all of the sudden you are looking at members of particular groups
not as like you, but as something different. Then they become
dehumanized, and that historically leads to mass murder, and has
nothing to do with which side of the aisle you consider yourself
politically. Both left and right wing regimes have used group
identification to commit mass murder, and it could easily happen in
this country if we start looking at every individual murder as the
result of a political ideology.

It's already happening. Not to the extent of killing people, but look
at the abuse Sarah Palin takes. Letterman made a rape joke about her
14 year old, and gives a lame half-apology, but if you read the
left-wing gathering places online, there's an awful lot of people that
think it was ok because Palin is Republican. That's just an example,
people on the right dehumanize people on the left plenty, too. And
it's so very dangerous, possibly one of the most dangerous tendencies
of our society, and the exact opposite of the world Martin Luther King
Jr. dreamed about.