I endorse what President Obama has said about the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Judge Roll and others in Arizona: it is a national tragedy. Not everything is known yet about the survivors and victims; one person killed was a little girl of only 9 who went to visit the politician out of her interest in civics.
Violence must never be used in politics; no one ever deserves to be intimidated or harmed because of their political views. I'm happy to define this case, like all victims' cases, through the lens of the fears of the victim -- Rep. Gifford -- which horribly came to pass. Months ago, she denounced Sarah Palin for her infamous "target" map that put a gun sight on states where congress people who supported Obama's health care plan were running in the elections, as it has been reported:
“We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list,” Ms. Giffords said last March. “But the thing is the way that she has it depicted has the cross hairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they’ve got to realize there’s consequences to that.”
I don't believe that the use of the target icons was intentionally violent -- in fact people have come up with a use of a target map with bull's eyes by the DLC (and of course, argued relentlessly that gun scopes and dart boards are different in implication). And in fact, while Palin stands accused of guiltily removing this offensive map yesterday without comment (it may have been removed to prevent overwhelming of the site), the Daily Kos has also removed a tasteless old blog headlined "Gifford is Dead to Me" -- because she wasn't far enough left for the Kossack taste -- she is, after all, a Blue Dog Democrat and former Republican.
Yet in this case, those perceptions of mine about intent are those of one far from the scene in Arizona. I think we in the North (especially in New York City where guns are outlawed) do two things about the gun culture of the South and West -- we both exaggerate it because we don't see its normalcy for some people, and we also tend not to take it so seriously as it seems a caricature. But for Congressman Gifford, in that situation, daily dealing with the rhetoric and passions around the immigration bill issue and health care reforms, who had already had her office door shattered, who had already suffered an incident where someone dropped a gun at a meeting she spoke at, her perceptions of the Palin rhetoric are legitimate -- in ways that the hysteria of Northeastern or California twitterers merely looking for anything to discredit the right are not. After all, these same extreme leftists can go after Blue Dogs and moderates in just the same vicious way -- look at what they did with Hillary on Youtube during the campaign last time.
When I first heard the news, I felt that same helpless fear I recall from when I was a little girl of six years old in second grade, and the nun who was the school principal came into our classroom with only one, stark report: "The president has been shot. Please rise to pray." I remember getting to my feet along with my classmates, knees shaking, and saying a futile "Hail Mary" and "Our Father" before being sent home on buses, where we sat grimly in silence, and a class clown standing up and inappropriately re-enacting the shooting not getting any laughs. It was one of the longest rides of my life. It is mixed in my memory with the sound of air raid sirens and the Cuban Missile Crisis sending the fathers home early from work. There is a profound horror in having the leader of your country killed -- and now of having an elected member of the House shot and critically wounded and a judge and other aides and supporters killed.
So that same feeling swept over me and many others that remember not only the Kennedy assassination but those of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy.
In this case, we don't know yet whether we can call this an assassination (although some believe that any killing of a public figure, even if for reasons of mental illness, is still an assassination merely for the fact that the person was a public figure), even if it is a targeting, because the shooter is clearly mentally deranged, and the role of a possible second person who acted strangely before the public meeting in the grocery store isn't clear yet.
Yet in the early hours following the news, there was a tidal swarm of the left and liberal twittering and blogging masses roundly denouncing Fox News, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and talk radio stars like Rush Limbaugh for this shooting. They held them responsible for this shooter, as if he was somehow directly responding to their command, at worse, or somehow responding to a violent zeitgeist in the culture that they are responsible for creating.
It turns out this young white male, age 22, was a pot smoker. It turns out that some defined the shooter as "left-wing" in his views and culture. But you won't find anyone blaming pot or the Internet's random leftwing culture for this incident -- that would be uncool. No one will refrain from stumping for the legalization of pot, if that's their issue, due to this tragedy. No one will criticize the way the Internet is bringing up our young with a constant intravenous drip of cultic emotion and propaganda.
It might turn out like any young male of his generation, he played first-person shooter video war games -- although that hasn't been mentioned. But even if that turns out to be true, we will never, ever hear that cultural fact mentioned as a possible cause. It won't be looked at; policies will not be made.
The shooter was so incoherent in his speech in classrooms that his fellow students were impressed by it -- and in fact campus police had to intervene due to his disruption on five occasions. His teachers had him suspended and even called in his parents to tell them that their son could not be reinstated until he had a psychiatric evaluation. His Youtube page, with its incoherent and strange conspiracy theories indicating that he believed he was under mind control, or that some forces were instating some sort of new currency -- or should -- and opposing the current monetary system and the flag and praising Hitler's Mein Kamp along with Marx's Communist Manifesto -- seem to be the product of mental illness. They do not reference, or appear to be informed by, Palin or Beck.
Yet we will not hear a root cause or a radical solution to this shooting to be any change in making it easier to institutionalize the mentally ill -- a very, very difficult process in most states. Nor will the discovery that he was severely mentally ill with a number of outbursts and breaks with reality be the end of the story -- no, not at all.
Nor will there be any serious review of gun control policies -- the Congresswoman herself was said to have a pistol permit. Many in the North especially are revulsed by the gun culture of the South and West -- I sure am -- and they'd be happy to abolish guns or make their availability extremely limited. But that won't be happening, no more than it happened after the last big school massacre by an insane person.
No, pot criminalization, or reduction of cultural violence incited by TV or videos, or more gun control, or increased ease in locking up the mentally ill -- none of these will be accessed as causes or issues or policy changes in response to this tragedy.
Congresswoman Giffords was Jewish, the first Jewish legislator in Arizona. In fact, the FBI statistics show that most hate crimes in America are made against Jews, and not blacks or Muslims, as many believe, although they are of course victimized by hate crimes as well. Yet her Jewishness was not immediately studied as a possible motive of this deranged man who had come to believe various other Internet cult theories. Sarah Palin, who has never been criticized for antisemitism, was. Now Andrew Sullivan -- who has no comments open ever on his blog -- has produced a reference an FBI angle that may indicate the shooter belong to a far right decidedly antisemitic group. Will Sullivan find a Fox News or a Glenn Beck angle for that, too?
No one will be looking at the leftist vilification of Israel and its frequent indulgence of antisemitism, of course.
Instead, the groundwork has been laid by the furious blogging and tweeting masses and then the liberal establishment that this narrative will have to be about changing the imagery and rhetoric of right-wing politics, and it will be not about the attempt of the left to delegitimize the right with the smear of violence incitement, but about the use of some elements of the right of symbols from gun culture, and about right-wing anger at left-wing policies.
So...Good luck on that one. Sadly, I don't think we will be seeing a change in conservative gun culture any time soon. Those conservatives who are capable of realizing the impact of their rhetoric would have already changed it; a tiny percentage of those who might have become heedless might change as a result of this tragedy.
But most will be infuriated by the notion that they are charged with inciting the use of assassination as a political tool and will respond accordingly -- by becoming smarter about it, but rising in anger and indignation, and ruthlessly seeking power. So in the end, the left that has so hysterically sought to delegitimize the Tea Party as a movement, and has tarred even any conservative as somehow tainted by violence will be in part inciting the backlash sure to come, just as it came after the upheavals of the 1960s and the 1970s.
There is another aspect to this. For example, there is McCain on TV back at the time of the initial "targets" scandal, patiently telling the TV "news announcer" repeatedly trying to badger him into some kind of statement about the targets that would legitimize them as an incitement of violence -- and his refusal to bite that bait, and continue to lay out his perspective on how he feels the health care reform was very thuggishly and illegitimately "put over" on the American people.
And that's just the trouble: if you are a conservative -- or a liberal for that matter -- and you are badgered to denounce the Palin targets, the very act of denouncing them somehow implies that indeed they were conscious incitement in the first place. And I for one, do not believe they were, even though I'm happy to validate and concede the concerns that Gifford had in her context -- and condemn the outrageous results that she and many others will see as a connection. I do think it's important to follow the distinctions: no one wants to be wrong and miss a possible linkage between invective and actual violence; but they should equally not want to be wrong about a possible inappropriate demonization. And they aren't.
What I am waiting to do, on the other side, is to see if bloggers like the Atlantic crew will concede -- now that we have information that the shooter is clearly mentally ill -- that this is not the result of incitement from lawful if conservative political figures, and not a deliberate political act. We already see that Paul Krugman won't take the high road on this, and of course what many have as grounds to go on politicizing a mentally ill person's assault is Sheriff Dupnik's own take on the situation:
“Let me say one thing, because people tend to pooh-pooh this business about all the vitriol that we hear inflaming the American public by people who make a living off of doing that,” the sheriff said during a press conference. “That may be free speech, but it’s not without consequences.”
During an interview earlier in the day that aired on MSNBC via local NBC affiliate KPNX, Dupnik declared that “it’s time that this country take a little introspective look at the crap that comes out on radio and TV.”
He believes that even if the shooter is mentally ill, his mental illness *takes this form* because of the conservative incitement and the Tea Party zeitgeist.
Perhaps he, like other liberals, imagines a world in which the Palins and the Becks articulate their opinions, but always with a fundamental respect regarding their opponents and a mindfulness of their angry imagery. If so, he doesn't likely stretch this worldview to include a Paul Krugman that doesn't vilify the rich daily in his columns and radical if subtle incitement of hatred and delegitimizaiton of any politician that disagrees with is decidedly left-of-center vision of an ideal country.
I listen respectfully to his obviously more informed views than mine; he's there. I do note, however, that none other than our president -- and many other leaders -- have told us, by contrast, to see the Fort Hood shooter as purely a case of mental illness. As not containing any religious Islamic fundamentalist imperatives or political motivations, although they are amply there to be seen, and were documented by co-workers. We are told to separate the fact that this mental illness *took this form* from any linkage to the many actual agitators around this troubled man, starting with the same mullah that inspired other violent acts. (I see Jeffrey Goldberg has also made something like this point; I haven't seen others.)
So, if Hinkley shoots Reagan (and on that day, no one rushed to judgement that it was the left who had arranged his shooting), and it turns out to be "about" the movie actress, we don't blame Hollywood. We don't blame Islamic terror on the Internet for Fort Hood. We don't blame video games for some of the school and college shootings.
And yet on the Arizona tragedy, we are to blame Sarah Palin, Fox Radio, and the Tea Party explicitly. OK, as long as we're clear on that.
James Fallows instructs us -- it's ok to make this connection between Palin and the Arizona shootings (no worries, James, many have already). But he doesn't say that it's ok to disconnect these facts, too, because the shooter is mentally ill.
Here's what I think will happen.
Sarah Palin will be thrown under the bus by the conservatives. She will be asked to fall on her sword, so to speak, over the "targets" issue. Many will be happy to see her go. She's a lightning rod for leftist hate, and discredits the right and some of them know it.
To be sure, the shooter -- again -- already had contact with Gifford in 2007, we're told, and had already told a classmate that he thought she was "stupid" -- long before Palin put up her target map, or others engaged in their strange gun-culture rhetoric (like the opponent who had a campaign event involving target practice (!)).
Yet at a time of national tragedy, and one with a political dimension, someone has to be blamed, and a mentally ill kid who is the product of who knows what -- too much pot-smoking, statistical rates for schizophrenia; environmental toxins; a sub-optimal uterine environment or poor parenting, too much Internet cult snacking -- whatever -- will be clearly insufficient here.
Why? Because even if the shooting was not politically motivated, the results are political anyway. The Congress has postponed the vote on the health care reform over this! That's how serious it is. And that's how serious it will continue to be taken -- and should be taken.
To be sure, Palin was already long attacked for her use of this gun symbolism 10 months ago and even years ago, and is now suffering problems among her own supporters and her culturally-affinitive Alaskans -- this surprising critique of her lack of huntsman credibility -- in the mainstream USA, no less -- and the canning of her TV show announced the very day of the shooting -- is clear indication that she was going down anyway. This will clinch it.
So maybe what we have to worry about is what comes after. The deadly denouement of her "target" rhetoric -- its display of gun culture and machismo more than any actual incitement to violence -- will mean she -- who has troubling shooting and siting a gun herself -- will have to be sacrified because a gun really was used tragically.
And the right might then come up shrewedly with somebody more smarter, more cunning as a result -- it's hardly likely that they will wilt. So it will be like Nixon following after Kennedy ultimately, and Reagan following after Carter. Maybe hard to stop.
There will be many sort of fake centrist calls like "can't we all get along" and "tone down the rhetoric" -- yet Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert will be the first to smugly tell us that they don't think there is any moral equivalence, and they don't think they are irrational like the right, and they think they are scientific -- and Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman will assure you of such "science" as well -- he already has. They will not be changing their incessant -- and more sophisticated -- incitement of hatred of the right, and delegitimization -- indeed, they have now got validation for criminalizing it, claiming that talk radio and Fox News -- those old forms of broadcasting that the new cable and new social media can't seem to make go away -- is to blame for any act of violence, anywhere.
After thinking of America's own past history of political violence, I thought of Russia's, and the woman parliamentarian I once knew, Galina Starovoitova, gunned down and killed, with her associate wounded, in St. Petersberg, apparently by Communists whose corruption she had uncovered. There are hundreds of people who have been assassinated in Russia: journalists, judges, lawyers, human rights monitors, priests, business people. In every single case, the conscious political nature of the act was indisputable. In most of the cases, the assassination was so well planned that no perpetrators are found; it is the curious custom of assassins in Russia to leave their gun at the scene of the crime, as if to let us know that tracing the gun will never lead to a solving of the crime.
In none of these cases were the people involved mentally ill. There are some mass murders by the mentally ill now and then in the former Soviet states, but the overwhelming majority of murders of public figures are clearly, unambiguously political in nature. You don't doubt when a leading Chechen human rights advocate like Natalya Estimirova is killed that someone who is mumbling incoherently about currency systems and brain control is involved -- it is obviously related to one of the death squad leaders active in killing many people in this country, with the inaction if not, as some believe, the tacit endorsement of the leaders. When Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist was killed, nobody thought that it was a pot-smoking Internet-surfing loner expelled from college for mental illness -- it was someone who wanted her critical coverage of atrocities ended.
By contrast, so many of the shootings in recent memory in the U.S. have involved the mentally deranged. To be sure, we don't know the real story of Lee Harvey Oswald but the anti-Israel positions of Sirhan Sirhan aren't portrayed as the product of mental illness, and he is not in a mental institution, but maximum security prison for his assassination of Robert Kennedy over his perception of his pro-Israel positions.
Yet most public shootings seem to be about the unstable commiting public acts out of derangement -- even if the derangement might have some political tinge -- and remember, we're not supposed to link that up if it is a foreign Islamic political or religious tinge; we can only link up conservative political and religious sentiment in the U.S.
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