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Is inflammatory rhetoric in the media and among politicians really in some way to blame for the tragedy in Tucson this weekend, the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the killing of federal Judge John M. Roll and five others?
As the first reports of the hideous news unfolded, I perused Facebook. I saw friends of mine, before we had any word about the perpetrator, react with comments like "I'm so tired of the insane inflammatory rhetoric that is now used by pundits and politicians alike" and, from an Arizonan, "This makes me embarrassed to live in this state," even though this was an as yet completely unexplained tragedy that no matter what could never reflect on a whole state. Then it began to emerge that the shooter was a deranged paranoid with no consistent political leanings.
That made a lot of that early reaction strike me as utterly knee-jerk—momentarily. Then people were reminding us that Sarah Palin had acually had Gabrielle Giffords' congressional district in the crosshairs of a gunsight on her notorious target map of representatives to defeat. (An advisor to Palin has since claimed, with an ugly disingenuousness, that the image represented not a gunsight but a surveyor's sight.) Giffords' opponent in the race had run an ad inviting followers to "Get on target for Victory in November Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jessie Kelly." And observers not only among my Facebook acquaintances but across the media began pointing out that deranged paranoids are exactly who you have to worry about when you issue such poisonous incitements. You're never going to get ordinary citizens to go out and shoot political candidates. But when you even hint at such a thing, and begin doing so often, and make it an accepted tone of discourse, sooner or later the truly crazed will sit up and listen, and you will reap the whirlwind.
Remember when Sharron Angle was running for senator from Utah last year and said, "I hope that's not where we're going, but you know if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out"? Of course the First Amendment protected her right to say that, and that is part of what makes this nation great, but of course it was at the same time an utterly indefensible and reckless thing to say.
As George Packer, of The New Yorker, wrote on his blog this weekend, in a posting titled "It Doesn't Matter Why He Did It": "For the past two years, many conservative leaders, activists, and media figures have made a habit of . . . not just arguing against their opponents, but doing everything possible to turn them into enemies of the country and cast them out beyond the pale. Instead of 'soft on defense,' one routinely hears the words 'treason' and 'traitor.' The President isn't a big-government liberal—he's a socialist who wants to impose tyranny. He's also, according to a minority of Republicans, including elected officials, an impostor. Even the reading of the Constitution on the first day of the 112th Congress was conceived as an assault on the legitimacy of the Democratic Administration and Congress.
"This relentlessly hostile rhetoric has become standard issue on the right. (On the left it appears in anonymous comment threads, not congressional speeches and national T.V. programs.)"
On the right much more than on the left? Of course. As Paul Krugman points out in The New York Times this morning, "there’s a huge contrast in the media. Listen to Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann, and you’ll hear a lot of caustic remarks and mockery aimed at Republicans. But you won’t hear jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at The Washington Post. Listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will."
Isn't time for some soul-searching across the land, and a real change in behavior?
