"It's
not as if opponents in Washington have stopped and held velvet-gloved hands.
But the venomous tone between the parties, the brutal and merciless passion
that has characterized political debate in recent years, has ceased for the
moment."
Whatever his motives, 22-year-old attacker Jared Loughner didn't differentiate between the parties of his victims. U.S. Federal Judge John Roll, a Republican and friend of Congresswoman Giffords, was one of those killed in the attack.
Very little is clear after
the massacre in Tucson. The evidence is thin, but a few facts have been
confirmed: Six people are dead and Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was, as of
Sunday, still fighting for her life. Jared Lee Loughner, the alleged assassin,
is in custody and is refusing to give the authorities any information, citing
the Fifth
Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects citizens against government
abuse of power during legal proceedings. One can only speculate as to the
motive of the mentally disturbed 22-year-old.
And in fact, there has been
exhaustive speculation. Although it still hasn’t been fully determined whether the
gunman had a political motivation, the event is being relentlessly politicized:
Those on the left like Paul
Krugman of The New York Times place the blame for the bloodshed on
the rhetoric of the right. Those on the right are rising up on the Internet to
assert that the attack was staged by the Democrats in order to neutralize the
Tea Party movement in Washington.
Between these two poles, the
political discourse in the United States is being altered - even without the assassinations
in Tucson. In this middle ground, one can hear the barely audible voice of
reason. There has been little place for it in the ever louder, ever more rabid
six-hour news cycles that govern the programming of TV stations.
It's not as if opponents in
Washington have stopped and held velvet-gloved hands. But the venomous tone
between the parties, the brutal and merciless passion that has characterized
political debate in recent years, has ceased for the moment. If Arizona is, as
the Sheriff of Pima County phrased it after the attack on Giffords, a “Mecca
for prejudice and bigotry,” Washington deserves the title even more.
Cable networks like Fox
News and MSNBC bombard their respective ideologically opposed
parties with inane one-sidedness. Cartoonists of late have had to draw with
either a red or blue marker, so that newspaper copy editors manage to avoid
embarrassment for spreading bad - that is to say, different - ideas. And then
there’s Sarah Palin, the trigger-happy governess of the Tea Party who sent out
a “hit list” of representatives who ought to be “eliminated” in the midterm
elections. Complete with crosshairs on a map of the USA (incidentally, Arizona and
Gabrielle Giffords were clearly marked).
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
How can anyone there be
surprised that such seeds of hatred will once in a while bear fruit? That
deranged characters or those disposed to acts of terrorism grab their guns?
That some paranoid country folk load up a truck full of explosives and use it
to blow up government buildings, as in Oklahoma City?
At that time, President Bill
Clinton had to deal with a similar political climate. The attack was one of the
turning points of his presidency. Likewise, the attack in Tucson is such an
event for the presidency of Barack Obama. And it’s a warning sign for the newly
elected Congress in Washington, which at the very least, demands more civilized
debate between politicians. If any sense comes out of this attack, it will be
that Americans recognize the need to disarm in thought and word.
