January 10, 2011 - The massacre in the Safeway parking lot is yet another example of how hate speech assigned to suggestive violent imagery can be explosive. Since the election of the first black president, we have seen the Right ignite this combustible combo again and again for the opportunist purposes of furthering its agenda and riling up its base.
The alleged gunman is Jared Loughner who has a known troubled history of instability. His bizarre and disruptive behavior led to suspension from Pima Community College until he agreed to undergo psychiatric evaluation. These are some of the red flags that continually get ignored until a tragedy happens.
Loughner’s constant rhetoric about what is unconstitutional, immigrants not speaking English and losing property rights, suggests that he had picked up on the code words of the rightwing political rhetoric. Last year, Sarah “Reload” Palin had a map on her website that put several Congressional districts in symbolic crosshairs. Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords
was in one of those rifle scope crosshairs.
In response to that map, Rep Giffords’ reprimand was that “there are consequences to that action.” There are consequences: The legislator was the first to be gunned down in what is now appropriately being called an assassination attempt. Before the rampage was over, six were killed and 13 wounded. Included in the carnage was a nine-year-old-child, a federal judge, Giffords’ staffers and other innocent bystanders. Palin has snatched the crosshairs map down since the shootings, while at the same time denying any culpability in the toxic political rhetoric.
There are three issues that are intertwined in this tragedy. First, this country does not have a realistic and comprehensive handle on mental illness. We often choose to ignore people with mental health issues or ridicule them. Even in the social movements - as loving and caring as we are - we haven’t developed a humane approach to the freedom fighters within our ranks with emotional or psychological problems. Treatment plans and funding levels would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious. If you have a loved one with a diagnosed mental health condition, you know that what exists is woefully inadequate.
Second, is another issue, related to the one above, that is the approach to problems. This is a reactionary society where extremists are able to dictate or change how the majority will live. The act of one extremist can lead to laws and regulations that further restrict all our civil liberties. Most people passively accept that approach because they don’t know what else to do. In the future, we can count on changes being made as to how we publicly interact with our lawmakers. Coupled with those changes will be the individual decision by citizens not to attend such political events. We saw the latter happen during the volatile town halls on health care reform.
Third, is the big issue is the Right’s message of fear that is sometimes laced with flammable inferences. The week after President Obama’s election, gun sales jumped 50% and gun stores still can’t keep up with ammunition demands. The US is reportedly the most armed country in the world with 90 guns per 100 people. Conservative talk show hosts like Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck and Rush “Dittohead” Limbaugh have multi-million dollar contracts to dole out unlimited quantities of hate and fear on their shows. During the last campaign cycle, we were bombarded with images of candidates holding or firing guns.
Candidate Sharron Angle of Minnesota encouraged her supporters to use “Second Amendment” remedies if the government doesn’t meet their needs. News coverage included men parading around in public spaces, visibly strapped down. This is not an atmosphere for healthy, political debate; this is a recipe for disaster. It is possible to disagree and not just be violently disagreeable. In a minute, the US will look like some of the other countries where opposing sides fire upon one another (literally) and the rest of the folks try to stay out of the way. This kind of political behavior is a deterrent to an open, democratic society and leaves the extremists in charge of the debate as well as governance.
The Right is a-flutter saying they are being unfairly targeted for the vitriolic environment that breeds a Jared Loughner, that Left extremists use the same loaded language. There is no evidence to substantiate this accusation. There are most certainly extremists on the far Left who advocate similar terrorist tactics but these folks are relegated to the fringes. They are not part of the routine appearances in mainstream media.
If pressed on this issue, most conservatives would not be able to come up with one Lefty who would be in the same club as Timothy McVeigh or Loughner. Domestic terrorism has the same roots as foreign terrorism. Loughner defined a terrorist as “a person who employs terror or terrorism, especially as a political weapon.” While that is a simplistic definition, there’s a kernel of truth in it.
We all have a responsibility to diffuse the politically-charged rhetoric in our society by denouncing public figures who engage in it. On a personal level, we can stop fanning the flames of people who are willing to spew the hateful words we may be too cowardly to utter. We must be vigilant in our efforts to stay civilized or be forced to operate with a society turned against itself, and where the targets are the “others” who don’t think or look like White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
