It is so easy to hope that cooler heads will prevail. Things are so much more complex than that. What happened this weekend was beyond the pale of standard political discourse, but it was not an event that no one saw coming.
What will come of this? I don't know for sure. I hope we see someone examine if an individual turned away from the Army in wartime because he was unfit to serve deserves the right to buy a semi-automatic pistol, but then, I've never been crazy about excessive gun control and we shouldn't go off the deep end. Of note, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords never was a big proponent of gun control herself.
What is far more significant than any legislation passed a result of all this is the change in the sort of conversation we engage in on the national I have debated with friends for days now about whether Jared Laughner is the result of violent rhetoric from the right, and hear repeatedly that this man does not fit well in the idea of right and left politics. Fine, but in a world where it is perfectly acceptable for Sarah Palin to tell supporters "don't retreat, instead reload", and where Sharron Angle can defend a call for "second amendment remedies," it shouldn't be surprising when a nutjob shows up with a pistol in hand intent to do harm.
Of note, this shooting happened a day after a birther disrupted the reading of the Constitution on the House floor. The birthers are an easy group to laugh at because they spout utter nonsense, but it is stunning that so many people would argue so fiercely that a president elected in a landslide is ineligible to serve. Sadly, Sarah Palin has palled around with birthers herself. The terrible state of affairs is that any type of challenge to an elected officials integrity is considered today as an acceptable raising of issues.
I want to say I don't believe many members of Congress have been so entrenched in this type of nonsense as those pundits who play around with voters for sport. Perhaps that is because every member of the U.S. House knows their own town halls could have easily turned out this way.
But even the lamest of sources have ways to reach millions today, and I fear the mainstream outlets fearful of being marginalized by Internet competition are willing to offer a megaphone to more crazies just so they keep tuning in. Does anyone recall the Truthers, for example, getting as much press nine years ago as Orly Taitz receives today?
And while cable people are falling over themselves to say all sides are guilty of ramping up the rhetoric, I will go out on a limb here and say such insanity is far more acceptable from the right in the eyes on national media. G. Gordon Liddy has his own nationally syndicated radio show despite calling for Waco folks to shoot federal agents in the head a whopping 17 years ago (not to mention the whole Watergate thing). Glenn Beck's bizarre grudges launched an attempted attack on a philanthropic foundation just last year, but he still keeps his spot on radio and on Fox News.
Since the election of Barack Obama, outright bigotry, attacking everything from his birthplace to his parents to his childhood education, has become acceptable fodder for critics to lazy to study his policy. We had a Republican Party of Florida leader suggest just two years ago that a presidential address to school children was actually a taxpayer-funded attempt to indoctrinate children with a socialist agenda.
The problem isn't simply that extremism exists in America. Like terrorism, drugs and crime, it will never disappear entirely whatever we do.
But the mainstreaming of extremism can be stopped tomorrow. It can be stopped by the mass media outlets who today lend space on their edit pages and talk show panels for absolute sociopaths.
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I really doubt that rhetoric had anything to do with this unfortunate event. Nor would I attribute the presence of MEIN KAMPF and THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO among his possessions as being the cause (although I suppose they could have attributed to his mental state - I've read both and they are both the products of deranged individuals who were experts at self-delusion).
ReplyDeleteI suspect that the cause was more organic - schizophrenia or some other form of neurological imbalance - these individuals will always be with us and the key is to identify them early (only you can't because that would be disciminatory profiling) and taking such steps as we can to prevent them from acting out their delusions.
Attempts to censor political views (in the 1950s it was called McCarthyism, I guess today we could call it Daily Kos-ism) is as futile as it is foolish. I rarely agree with Glenn Beck or Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (both of whom some would view as "absolute sociopaths") but I wouldn't dream of attempting to silence them nor would I try to pressure others into censoring them, which seems to be exactly what you are advocating
No. I completely oppose censorship. But there is also such a thing as responsibility. The media do not call up the KKK to get input on race relations, or Maoist groups to talk about election reforms. That isn't censorship but judgment. My problem is that media today seems to exercise little judgment on who to include among so-called mainstream pundits. I agree that crazies will always exist, but giving people airtime to encourage extremists is irresponsible.
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