My fellow Americans,
You are about to hear a bunch of uncritical and straight up stupid shit in the media in the coming days. Let me share some knowledge to inoculate you from the B.S.
I have been watching television since late yesterday when I heard the news about the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabby Giffords. It was inevitable that the mainstream media would eventually turn to trying to assign blame for what happened.
I figured that they would mostly focus on the typical story: "Are elected officials safe in their communities? My best guess was that the focus would also quickly turn to the issue of gun control again. Predictably both of these issues have been addressed on the cable news programs over the past few hours.
I figured that the MSM would mostly stay away from discussing the virulent anti-government rhetoric that has been so prevalent in the right-wing since the late 70s. Surprisingly I saw that some media outlets were gingerly starting to address the issue of violent political rhetoric. However, predictably they took the "both-sides" do it false equivalency tact in addressing the issue. This form of intellectual laziness has given way to another issue that I want to raise here.
The inability of most Americans (particularly most media outlets)to keep two thoughts in their brains at the same time is stunning to me. Yes, this young man can be insane AND the right-wing’s rhetoric can be contributing to increased threat and violence. Both can hold court at the same time. I am not big on causal theories. I can however understand correlations. This was a ‘political’ mass assassination because its target was a member of Congress (a representative of the people). We can say that without parsing the term. So no, I don’t think that this young man necessarily targeted Rep. Giffords about health care but it is clear from his youtube and Myspace clips that he was anti-government. Therefore this act was ‘political’ in nature. It does not have to be partisan but it most certainly is political.
This brings me to the second thought that we should be able to hold at the same time. Elected officials and media people who incite individuals are of course partly responsible for the political climate that we are living in right now. They encourage people to be anti-government. As such, even a crazy person like this young man, can feel validated in having little to no respect for elected officials. He can dehumanize his congressperson because she is just seen as a representative of the ‘evil’ government. She ceases to be a person. THAT is how Sarah Palin’s "reload" and "crosshairs" is correlated to the actions of a madman in Arizona. It is ‘both and’ proposition rather than ‘either or’ one.
P.S. We don't have to wait for all of the 'facts' to be known to be able to say that we are saturated with political language suggesting that it is OK to "target" politicians. We are all marinating in that soup. Even crazy people consume media...
P.P.S. I co-sign this thought by PM Carpenter:
The shooting -- quite simply a mass assassination, both real and attempted, atypical of even second-rate banana republics -- was the product of a gun-happy culture thriving within the violent, expansive asylum of America's depraved, right-wing politics.