The Tucson Shooting

I was out of town when the shooting happened in Tucson, and I have been trying ever since to get back to this blog to write something about it (among other things), but for some reason or another I have never managed to find the time. Plenty of blogs and op-eds have been written about the incident at this point, but I just want to add a few points.

First, you can say what you want about Loughner's motives and politics or whether or not one should speculate, but let's be perfectly clear: both sides of the political spectrum have not regularly engaged in violence-fomenting rhetoric. Over the last two years there has been one collective group of individuals that has been hyping Second Amendment remedies, don't retreat - reload!, bullseye-laden maps, packing AR-15s at rallies, death panels, FEMA concentration camps, waving signs that read 'we're unarmed - this time,' spewing crap about refreshing the tree of liberty with blood, and otherwise creating an apocalyptic atmosphere where President Obama and the Democratic Party are the greatest Evil ever inflicted upon America . One party/collective group, and that has been the Republicans and the teatards and their corporate mouthpieces on Fox News. Regardless of Loughner's mental illness, regardless of his political motivations (or lack thereof), there are consequences when your national political strategy consists of maintaining a constant state of fear and paranoia and instability, and this is just one of them. Many on the right have rushed to the insanity defense. Yes, Loughner was mentally unstable. But guess what? Mentally unstable people are more prone to mentally unstable acts when you fill the airwaves with eliminationist falsehoods and 24/7 paranoia.

Second, I agree with what Arianna said that we do not seem to be viewing this, and it does not seem to be covered as, an occurrence that bears the gravity of an attempted assassination on a sitting member of our elected government.

Well, not so fast. This weekend's atrocity shouldn't simply be a crash on the side of the road that delays us for a few minutes before we put it in the rear-view mirror -- this should be a moment that changes the direction we're traveling in. The consequences of this should be more than simply a week's delay of the vote on the "Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act." We need to recognize what has happened to our democracy and renew our efforts to fix it.

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Rage, paranoia, and division are not the only possible responses to the very legitimate anger millions of Americans -- on both sides of the political spectrum -- are feeling at the state of the country and the state of their lives. And the Arizona shootings put a spotlight on the need to redirect that anger, frustration, and despair, and use them to take action, and make life better for those who need help. We can choose connection rather than division. Understanding rather than fear. Reaching out rather than turning away.

More time has been spent in the wake of the shooting in the typical red vs. blue horse race bull shit of he said/she said than concentrating on the fact that we just had an attempted assassination on a sitting member of Congress. That's an incredibly grave occurrence, but as usual, the nation is more interested on what Sarah Palin said on her Twittertwat account than the fact that WE JUST HAD AN ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT ON A SITTING MEMBER OF CONGRESS. But it's okay now, because the Republicans are now calling the healthcare repeal bill the "Repealing the Job Destroying Health Care Law Act" instead of "Job Killing." And Chuck Schumer wants to sit with Tom Coburn at the SOTU.

These things will continue to happen until we can manage to inject a modicum of decency and honesty in our public discourse, which is unlikely to ever happen when the Republicans have adopted lying through their teeth as an electoral strategy, dumbshits keep voting for them despite their god awful track record of governance, and we have an entire cable network devoted to reinforcing their falsehoods.