This is my very first diary on Daily Kos. I’ve always wanted to write one, but I didn’t want to do a rant thread and I don’t have the time to do a well researched one either. However after the events of this past weekend, I had to speak out. So forgive me if this isn’t up to DK’s standards. I’ve tried to do my best.
It’s a childhood saying.
‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but talking will never hurt me’.
There was a time when we were taught as children that when someone says something about us or to us that is bad or mean-spirited, that we should never let it break our own spirit or erode our sense of being or self-worth.
That childhood saying has been derailed.
It turns out that words do have meaning after all, and some words can sting the strongest among us. For those who have lost their sense of self-respect, self-worth and pride, words can and do hurt deeply and their meaning can be greatly distorted and misapplied.
Please follow me after the jump.
With the economy being as bad as it is now, with people losing their jobs, homes and having inadequate health care – with those who are working under pressure and being underpaid and unappreciated, one paycheck or health scare away from destitution, the climate is ripe for social discourse. When things aren’t right, they just aren’t right and one cannot put a lid on it and look the other way, because that lid is on a pressure cooker and at some point, the pressure builds. If not relieved properly, that lid will blow.
On April 15, 2010, the fifteenth anniversary of one of those ‘lid blows’ – the Oklahoma City Bombing, former President William Jefferson Clinton spoke about the words we use (all emphasis in quotes added by me):
"What we learned from Oklahoma City is not that we should gag each other or that we should reduce our passion for the positions we hold – but that the words we use really do matter, because there's this vast echo chamber, and they go across space and they fall on the serious and the delirious alike. They fall on the connected and the unhinged alike,"...
"One of the things that the conservatives have always brought to the table in America is a reminder that no law can replace personal responsibility. And the more power you have and the more influence you have, the more responsibility you have."
http://www.cbsnews.com/...
David Gregory played a clip of President Clinton’s remarks from the Center of American Process’ event called: The Tragedy of Oklahoma City 15 Years Later and the Lessons for Today on Meet the Press (MTP) today, January 9, 2011, one day after the newest lid blew off of the pressure cooker yesterday -- the shooting in Tucson, Arizona that killed 6 and wounded 13 others, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords who remains in critical condition. Gregory’s guest were Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), and Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID).
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
Before I get to the MTP show, there is a transcript of the April 15th panel discussion about OKC – Lessons for Today that you may want to read at your convenience. There is some important dialogue that came out of that forum that we can all reflect upon as we move to recover from this latest national tragedy. In his opening remarks, John Podesta, President of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, quoted Former Senator Bob Dole (who in all of the madness of yesterday has been reportedly hospitalized again for a recurring bout of fever http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com... ):
Senator Bob Dole said that partisanship stops at evil’s edge.
Podesta went on to say:
"That experience speaks to us now. Today, it’s important to remember that there are some individuals who are seized, again, by anger and fear. And the path from these intensely felt emotions to violent action can be shorter than many of us would like to believe. In our country, there must always be a place for dissent and disappointment, even anger at things the government does. That is patriotic.
But when any leader, whether in politics or in the news media, promotes fear-mongering or distortion to advance a political agenda, it can create a climate where violence is more imaginable. And when they pose government as the enemy of the people, that can have consequences today.
There’s a special responsibility of leadership that demands us to keep historical lessons in mind as public officials and politicians choose their words about their opponents’ character and discuss their differing visions for the country. It’s my hope that we can do much better than we’re doing in this regard. History and our highest values demand that we try."
http://www.americanprogressaction.or...
Distortion. Distortion indeed. President Clinton went on during the course of that panel discussion to describe the historical context during that time that laid the groundwork for seeds of discontent:
"...There was a story in The New York Times today by a reporter who’s been positively – and I say that in a positive way – positively interested in this, drawing parallels to the time running up to Oklahoma City and a lot of the political discord that exists in our country today.
Before the bombing occurred, there was a sort of fever in America in the early 1990s. First, it was a time, like now, of dramatic upheaval. A lot of old arrangements had changed. The things that anchored peoples’ lives and gave a certainty to them had been unraveling. Some of them, by then, for 20 years...
...Median family income began to stagnate and inequality in our country began to increase going back in the early ’70s when we went off the gold standards and we developed a global financial system before we had a global economic system or any kind of a global compact or any kind of adequate response to it. And there were huge numbers of Americans who were working longer hours for lower incomes; more and more families under enormous economic stress.
...We moved from the Cold War to an interdependent world full of positive and negative forces. We moved from an industrialized economy that built the greatest middle class in history in the United States into an information age that opened vast new vistas and posed all kinds of new problems. And there were more and more people who had a hard time figuring out where they fit in. More and more people who had a very difficult time living with confidence and optimism in the face of change. It is true that we see some of that today.
Clinton goes on to say in a way that is haunting familiar today:
"...So this was all going on – a great uprooting in America; people feeling disoriented. I’ll never forget a young woman who helped me understand this. She was a 17-year-old high school senior in New Hampshire when I ran for president. At that time, New Hampshire was one of the worst economies in the country. And she introduced me to her parents, and her father was telling me, he said, you know, I can’t look into the face of my wife and children at dinner anymore because I feel like a failure.
This sense of loss, of incapacity, of impotence makes people vulnerable to the Siren songs of simple explanations – wanting the world to make sense again. And so there was this rising movement in the early ’90s that was basically not just a carefully orchestrated plot by people of extreme right-wing views but one that fell into fertile soil because there were so many people for whom the world no longer made sense. They wanted a simple, clear explanation of what was an inherently complex mixed picture full of challenges that required not only changes in public policy but personal conduct and imagination about the world we were living in..."
And here we are today, having to reflect on what has gone so very wrong once again. Yet President Clinton’s now prophetic offerings makes it clear what has gone wrong and why. Podesta’s words also speak to a clear solution that all of our elected officials, the media in all of its forms, as well as all of us, should start to adhere to.
As I watched MTP today, something I rarely do, I was struck by the tone of urgency on the part of the congressional panel. I was particularly struck by the passionate, but eloquent plea by Representative Schultz. Even though Gregory asked her the question, Ms. Schultz didn’t turn to the camera. She turned directly to her colleagues and spoke with a still purpose:
"... I agree, it's our responsibility to, to make sure that we set the right example and set the tone of civility. But the shock jocks and the political movement leaders that are out there on both sides of the aisle need to get--have some pause as well. I mean, the, the phrase that you just used, "we use ballots, not bullets," the actual reverse of that phrase was used in my district by someone who was almost the chief of staff to an incoming member of Congress where she said at a rally, at a tea party rally, "We will use bullets if ballots don't work." So the rhetoric outside needs to be toned down as well. But we have to set the first example."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
Lastly, these events made me think of – of all things, Saturday Night Live (SNL). You may ask why. There was an ongoing weekly skit called ‘Weekend Update’ that included a segment called ‘Point/Counterpoint’, played brilliantly by Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd, among others. The segment was based on 60 Minutes’ actual version of Point/Counterpoint where James Kilpatrick and Shana Alexander would civilly debate opposite sides of a current issue. However during the SNL skit, Aykroyd and Curtin would totally derail from the issue to make ad hominem attacks on each other’s position as well as to start calling one another names with perfect staccato precision:
"Dan, you pompous ass!"
"Jane, you ignorant slut..."
In college while watching SNL studying calculus and physics and such, it was hilarious. It was a totally unhinged display of outrageous attacks during a debate that had absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand. It was funny because at least at that time, in my world, no one would think to incorporate such low blows during the course of discussing serious matters that affected our country and the Americans in it.
Well, we have now derailed into uncivil discourse, incorporating low blows, code language and implied threats into the political demographic and it’s not funny at all.
It’s tragic and it has tragic consequences.
"They wanted a simple, clear explanation of what was an inherently complex mixed picture full of challenges..."
Over the last year or so, or at least since I’ve been actively reading Daily Kos, there has been this outcry from progressives that our message has derailed.
Boy, did it ever. We can over analyze with all of our skillsets, educational and real life experiences until the cows come home, but as the former President has stated, Americans want simple talk to not so simple problems and they don’t want to be talked down to. At the top of the leadership chain is our own current President Barack Obama. The good news here is that despite the loud clamoring of frustrated liberals who wanted the President to fully engage in a ‘take no prisoners’, trench warfare stance with the Republican party, it is his level of calmness at the helm that we are going to need to lean on now. The President at his level has to now use that calmness to speak on this matter like he did when faced with the Jeremiah Wright situation. As President of the United States, he can now bring focus back to governing our democracy with civility.
At this point, it really doesn’t matter if Jared Lee Loughner was some fringe right-winger or left-winger or a stone cold insane lunatic. The leaders who we elect have a fiduciary responsibility to act like leaders and rise above the rhetoric. Because they are leaders, their bar of civility is set very high and as leaders, they must lead by example.
That goes for those who want to be leaders.
That goes for those who advocate to and on behalf of our leaders.
That goes for anyone who has the privilege to speak to millions of their fellow Americans everyday through paper, microphone, TV screens or html text.
That goes for all of us.
Words can and do hurt and sometimes the actions behind those words can get some of us killed.