When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?
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 2008campaign. 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. But there has, in fact, been a rising tide of threats and vandalism aimed at elected officials, including both Judge John Roll, who was killed Saturday, and Representative Gabrielle Giffords. One of these days, someone was bound to take it to the next level. And now someone has.
It’s true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled. But that doesn’t mean that his act can or should be treated as an isolated event, having nothing to do with the national climate.
Last spring Politico.com reported on a surge in threats against members of Congress, which were already up by 300 percent. A number of the people making those threats had a history of mental illness — but something about the current state of America has been causing far more disturbed people than before to act out their illness by threatening, or actually engaging in, political violence.
And there’s not much question what has changed. As Clarence Dupnik, the sheriff responsible for dealing with the Arizona shootings, put it, it’s “the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business.” The vast majority of those who listen to that toxic rhetoric stop short of actual violence, but some, inevitably, cross that line.
[italics added] Toxic rhetoric is an apt description.
Put me in the same category as Krugman, in not being too surprised that an inflamed and troubled right-winger did this. It was spawned by some who in the recent past were reveling in divisiveness amid a hyperbolic rhetoric of violence.
Further links to consider: Here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, noting at p.2,
Law enforcement recovered a Glock 9mm pistol that Loughner bought in November [probably post-election] and is alleged to have used in the shooting, according to the [released official] statement.
Hat tip to Avidor at Dump Bachmann, for the Krugman and City Pages links.
Surely it can be said that pointing fingers now is political opportunism, and there is that flavor. However, it's a good time for a Jesus lesson for the Jesus Jockeys among the collection of those who said in the past what they said, and now aptly should be called to task; hence let of all things Urban Dictionary carry the lesson to these self-supposing savants.
Finally, the worse of reactions is lying disingenuousness along with an utter and shameful self-denial of what one has quite recently done and said previously, as if suddenly a victim of a total [and suitably convenient] short term memory failure; this troubling link.
Hypocrites of the world, unite.
You now have a standard bearer whose audacity you are hard pressed to match. One who appears to want the reap-and-sow adage to reach only to others. Not for the home front. Not for the more blatant of the toxic rhetoricians.
"I was only speaking figuratively, and please forget I spoke at all," just does not cut it, no way, no how. Dead bodies exist. The killer was "armed and dangerous," as urged.
Leftists criticize, constructively. Right-wingnuts aim to kill.
__________UPDATE___________
In the doomed to repeat forgotten history queue, Bradblog publishes this leaflet circulated in Dallas the day before the Kennedy shooting, (click it to enlarge and read - it's the best resolution available from the original post at Bradblog).
Palin and Bachmann had toxic rhetoric precursors, and invented nothing themselves. Their thing has been using it as a springboard in office seeking.
The entire Bradblog post is worth reader attention. Again, this link.