On CNN yesterday, Wolf Blitzer and his guests repeatedly pointed out that although Palin had made the crosshairs ad that targeted Giffords, there was no evidence that the shooter had seen the ad or even liked Sarah Palin. The unspoken suggestion was that it was therefore unfair to link Sarah Palin to this tragic event--it's just the act of a crazy person, they said.
One could make that argument if one looks at the small picture, but I think we need to look at the larger picture. It is worth noting that no congressperson has been shot in 30 years, yet there have been plenty of crazy people in the past 30 years. So why now?
We may not know yet why Jared Lee Loughner went to Safeway in Tuscon, Arizona, to shoot Gabrielle Giffords and several others, but we know that he expressed paranoia about the integrity of the government and that Giffords--a democrat--was his target. And voices like Palin, Beck, Bachmann, King, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, and others helped put her in his sights even if you discount the crosshairs ad. Rupret Murdoch and his Fox News empire bear a substantial amount of blame.
Together, conservative voices have worked carefully over the past several decades to promote attitudes of fear and distrust about the government. Since President Obama took office, they have ratcheted up the rhetoric to the point where it is not even surprising or shocking to hear a conservative figurehead state on television that democrats want to destroy America or that the president doesn't "see America as you or I see it."
Without using the words "evil," they have strived to demonize this president from even before he was elected. Actually, Glenn Beck has gone so far as to use the word "evil." This is some of the rhetoric his 2 million viewers regularly hear (courtesy of Media Matters):
The LEFT is "calling for violence in the streets."
The GOVERNMENT is deliberately inflating food prices.
Scientists are lying about global warming.
"I say restore a man's freedom, the LEFT says tear it apart."
PROGRESSIVES are assembling a "death star."
PROGRESSIVES want to "bring the Greek revolution here."
"Big, bloated GOVERNMENT...always ends in piano wire...or collapse."
LIBERALS have called for "violent revolution."
"PROGRESSIVES really are the bane of the constitution's existence."
"Next year could be off-with-their-heads revolution."
The GOVERNMENT is coming to seize your property.
The GOVERNMENT is following Marx's "ten planks to seize power and destroy freedom."
The "lame-duck Congress...is EVIL."
"Our country's coming apart at the seams."
And lest you doubt the veracity of everything he says, Beck points out that Fox knows he is telling the truth.
"Do you really believe that I could make things up and stay on the air?"
Just recently, Sarah Palin told Laura Ingraham that "I don't personally trust what comes out of the White House" and that Obama is "deliberately trying to weaken America."
All the other voices in Fox and conservative la-la land have parroted these same memes.
In the next breath, they talk about "second amendment remedies," "locking and reloading," and "revolution."
When deliberately asked, they hurriedly step back and say, "Oh no, I don't mean violence." Yet Glenn Beck says people need to store food rations and stock up on gold for the future.
The short translation of what they are saying and what Fox promotes:
GOVERNMENT IS YOUR ENEMY AS LONG AS DEMOCRATS ARE IN CONTROL AND YOU SHOULD BE AFRAID.
We know it is all lies. They know it is all lies. If they truly believed that the government was veering toward a communist dictatorship, they would not be going on Sunday news shows to talk about it because they'd be too afraid of the government's retaliation.
They would also be marshalizing genuine forces to fight it--if they were true patriots, that is.
But they are not because none of it is true and they know it. But they are hoping that the people who listen to them will believe it is true. They are hoping that their messages seeking to dehumanize and demonize democrats and the left will coalesce to create a strong backlash against the democratic party, boosting the conservatives to power.
They run on fear.
And if a few nuts like Loughner get caught up in their net of fear and become convinced that government is evil, that the country is falling apart, and that we need to use precious metals as our currency, well, that's just the price 18 people in Arizona have to pay to restore conservatives to power. And it's a few less democrats they have to worry about.
Loughner was able to shoot Gabrielle Giffords and the people there to see her because he saw them not as people but as obstacles and enemies. Worse, they were evil, destructive forces.
Even if Loughner didn't follow Sarah Palin closely or regularly watch Fox News, he lives in a state where the fear level has been ratcheted so high as a result of conservative rhetoric that it was nearly impossible for someone in his mental state not to get caught up in it.
Sometimes, people with mental illness that causes delusions and paranoia have lives steeped in religion, so they are paranoid about satan or have delusions that God wants them to do hateful things. Others have lives steeped in political hostility and animosity toward the government--which becomes their target.
Fox News, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and others are spreading political hostility and animosity toward the government so that those "looking" for enemies will know exactly where to find them--at Town Hall meetings at their local Safeway Grocery store.
The rap mogul Russell Simmons was on Keith Olbermann last week and was expressing his dismay at how things people were to civilized and polite to say only a few years ago had become mainstream talking points in conservative circles.
The country as a whole used to consider people who espoused rhetoric like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, or Michele Bachmann as "fringe" or "lunatics." Instead, every media outlet in the world chases after them until they develop an illusion of being a credible figurehead. For some conservatives, Sarah Palin has become their Joan of Arc.
Let Fox News do what it wants, but I call on CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, and other legitimate news outlets to return to responsible journalism and stop pretending that ignorant hatemongers and lunatics deserve to be mainstream voices in our nation.