The "horrible" needs no explanation. Nineteen people shot, six people dead, including a judge and a nine year old girl; a congresswoman critically injured. (As of this writing, it looks as if Gabrielle Giffords will survive a direct headshot. While not a miracle, this is perhaps the only good news in the whole story.)
I must confess I felt an immediate and overpowering urge to join what seems to be everyone else of note and politicize this event. The speed with which this image proliferated
--almost faster than a speeding bullet--compounded my sense of horror at this atrocity. (Yes, those are actual crosshairs, with a helpful list of "targets" for any aspiring wackos out there).
And yet...
I'm sure that Palin and her cotillion will call this an unfortunate coincidence. I'm also sure that in placing little crosshairs over Gifford's district, Palin did not intend that Giffords should actually be shot. Indeed, the most recent news suggests that the attack had nothing to do with Palin's call to arms: the shooter was NOT a Tea Party member, and his online scat reeks of craziness and inherent violence, but doesn't really say anything (coherent, at least) politically.
The left, of course, accused the Tea Partiers before any facts were, or could have been, known. It seemed like a foregone conclusion, after all. The congresswoman's father, when asked if she had any enemies, replied "Yeah...the entire Tea Party". Her office had been vandalized hours after she had voted for Obamacare. A Tea Party member and unsuccessful Arizona Senate candidate had suggested "Second Amendment remedies" to some of America's problems; she presumably would have named Giffords as "a problem".
The facts are being dismissed in some quarters as fast as they come out. Maybe Loughner wasn't a Tea Party member, or even a Republican, but he could have been. Should have been?
In short, the political culture in the United States, and increasingly here in Canada, is deeply disturbed. It seems to me--and I might well be wrong--that in days gone by, it was permissible to disagree with a political opponent and still respect him or her. You could think someone's views were misguided without believing they were stupid, much less evil. I'm as guilty as anyone else: I immediately assumed Loughner was a right winger for many reasons, all of which boil down to well, hey, I disagree with right-wingers . Shameful of me. It's a good thing I held off on blogging. The rush to politicize an obscene tragedy is distasteful in the extreme.
There will always be crazies out there, willing to kill and die in defence of their craziness. That''s not to suggest we couldn't all use a massive injection of civility into our political discourse, only that by itself, such an injection won't stop events like yesterday's.
I WOULD suggest that the ease with which persons with criminal backgrounds can acquire thirty-round Glocks doesn't help matters much. Somehow I doubt the Founding Fathers intended the Second Amendment to be the cultural touchstone it has become.
I hope Congresswoman Giffords pulls through. I hope that something is learned from the deaths. And I hope we can all take a step back, whenever these awful incidents occur, and not immediately blame our political enemies. In fact, I hope the term 'political enemies' can be retired some time before I die.
3 comments:
It is horrible and what I want is "What is this guy saying as to why he did it?"
Why aren't they saying or telling us what he is saying. Unless it has to do with this 'possible second guy'.
I want to hear what this wacko says.
"Why" is the one question journalists never seem to get around to, isn't it? I know he invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, which is darkly comic considering the rather incriminating number of witnesses. The only scrap I've seen hinting at a motive had to do with the literacy rate in Arizona, or at least the suspect's misperception of same. Of all things.
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