Mutual Respect:
What America Owes Itself and the World
"The election of the first
African American to the office of president actually seems to have poisoned the
climate in some regions and social strata. … The merciless struggle between
cultures should not be allowed to become a behavioral model for domestic
politics. Mutual respect is something that the highly dynamic and competition-hardened
U.S. democracy owes itself and the world."
U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords: Gunned down while meeting constituents at a grocery store, she is in critical condition after a bullet passed through her brain.
Timothy McVeigh showed
no remorse when he was executed in 2001. He had instructed his lawyers to
undertake nothing to prevent the death penalty. Shortly before the execution, he
reportedly said, “168 to 1.” On April 19, 1995, McVeigh parked a van with
homemade explosives in front of an office building in Oklahoma City. The blast
killed 168 people and injured 800. The American terrorist never revealed much
about his motives and instigators. It was, however, clear, that the actions of
the extreme right-wing weapons enthusiast were motivated by hatred of the
Clinton Administration - as well as that crazy desire for martyrdom that is not
the monopoly of religious fanatics.
Even if the background of the
bloodbath in Arizona remains unclear, parallels can be noted with Oklahoma.
Like McVeigh, suspect Jared Lee L. felt marginalized and excluded. He
reportedly read Hitler’s Mein
Kampf, but also Karl
Marx, and he apparently hates Obama and the Democrats. The shot to the head
of Gabrielle Giffords can be equated with an attempted execution. It’s also
very possible that her Jewish faith played a role. So is this a matter of mentally
disturbed individual perpetrators, who, like almost all deranged gunmen and
terrorists, exist in a sick parallel universe where revenge is the only thing
that matters? And don't such events inevitably occur from time to time, in the
unpredictable manner of a natural disaster?
Arizona Sheriff Clarence
Dupnik cannot accept the “cruel coincidence” theory. Dupnik speaks of a social
climate of hate and prejudice that further inflames the minds of mentally
unstable individuals. In fact, the gambling on Wall Street that average
American voters are paying dearly for, the unholy mélange of economic crisis
and war, and the damage to the ego that comes along with them, has severely
devastated the American soul - and has taken root more deeply than the traumas
of Waco, Somalia and the Gulf War that agitated McVeigh in the mid-nineties.
Obama, dubbed the conciliator,
has not been able to refocus Americans, in thought and in action, on their
common ground. If Americans are focusing on anything right now, it's what
separates them, not what brings them together. On the contrary: the election of
the first African American to the office of president actually seems to have
poisoned the climate in some regions and social strata. The polarization that
is necessary for every debate often tips toward a complete inability to
reconcile differences. Once reasonably thoughtful media no longer refrain from creating
agitation and the sinister Sarah Palin puts the constituencies of lawmakers who
don’t vote in accordance with her ideas in the cross hairs, including that of
Gabrielle Giffords.
It would be difficult to
prove that the murders in Arizona wouldn’t have taken place in a more moderate
political climate. However, the shots are a brutally clear warning that it's
time to revive the rules of civilized coexistence and fair political discourse.
The merciless struggle between cultures should not be allowed to become a
behavioral model for domestic politics. Mutual respect is something that the
highly dynamic and competition-hardened U.S. democracy owes itself and the
world.
