Climate of Hate. Put me in the latter category.
I’ve had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since the final stages of the 2008 campaign. I remembered the upsurge in political hatred after Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 — an upsurge that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. And you could see, just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies, that it was ready to happen again.
The Department of Homeland Security reached the same conclusion: in April 2009 an internal report warned that right-wing extremism was on the rise, with a growing potential for violence. Conservatives denounced that report. It’s true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled. Last spring Politico.com reported on a surge in threats against members of Congress, which were already up by 300 percent. And there’s not much question what has changed. It’s important to be clear here about the nature of our sickness. Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? And there’s a huge contrast in the media. Arizona Shootings: Our Moment of Silence Needs to Be Followed by More Than Just Lowered Voices.
"A little soul searching.
" That is what Clarence Dupnik, the Sheriff of Pima County -- and good friend of both Congresswoman Giffords and Judge John Roll -- said our country needs to engage in. And while we don't know all the facts yet and the story is still unfolding, we know enough to know that we need more than a little soul searching. The fact that the gunman is clearly mentally unbalanced does not absolve us of the responsibility to consider the atmosphere in which the shootings occurred.
"Shootings of political figures are by definition 'political,'" writes James Fallows. "That's how the target came to public notice; it is why we say 'assassination' rather than plain murder. " And the atmosphere in which this horrible tragedy was born, nurtured, and carried to its wretched fruition is toxic.
And there is no doubt that our collective immune system is worn down, making us more susceptible to the kind of infection that turned that Arizona parking lot into a killing field. Tea Party & the Tucson Tragedy. There's something offensive, as well as pointless, about the politically charged inquiry into what might have been swirling inside the head of Jared Loughner.
We hear that the accused shooter read The Communist Manifesto and liked flag-burning videos— good news for the right. Wait—he was a devotee of Ayn Rand and favored the gold standard, so he was a right-winger after all. Some assassinations embody an ideology, however twisted. Based on what we know so far, the Tucson killings look like more like politically tinged schizophrenia. It is appropriate, however, to consider what was swirling outside Loughner's head. At the core of the far right's culpability is its ongoing attack on the legitimacy of U.S. government—a venomous campaign not so different from the backdrop to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Often the two issues are blurred together, because if government is illegitimate, rebellion is an appropriate response (hence the Colonial costumes).