Anger, fear, hate and a state of total oblivion to senseless war were the active ingredients that concocted the the combustible 1960's. It's also eerily similar to the level of toxins that currently infect today's talk as it pertains to politics, ideology and the strictly visceral conditioned response to the myriad social issues that a society of 300 million plus face on a daily basis. We saw the reverberations of such a harmful mixture of energy aired out this past weekend when a lone shooter who was already weak of thought took to exercising his God-given man-made second amendment rights on a congresswoman he deemed a part of the problem with government. Though he failed in his assassination attempt of Gabrielle Gifford he successfully murdered in cold blood 6 innocent bystanders including a 9 year old girl and sending an additional 14 people to ICU with critical gun shoot wounds including his primary target Congresswoman Gifford who miraculously survived a point blank shot to the head from a 9mm pistol.
The incident that occurred in front of Safeway in Tuscon Arizona last Saturday was not the beginning and likely not the end of a streak of violence currently running through the vein of America. The news media is replete with imagery of hate, anger and even an encouragement of anger from certain political office seekers, holders and pundits on a 24 hour, 7 day a week basis. If such inundation is not bad enough the stoked ignorance, fear, anger and hate is mostly met with a tacit acknowledgement and even justification from this president and many of his political allies who have the same omni-directional target of angst on their back . This shameful imbalance and moreover misdirected public sentiment is one of the primary causes for the current climate of hate that our country is grappling with. It is also a primary cause for the uptick in political threats and violence being carried out today.
On the Defense
Unless you lived under a rock for the past few days (or watch Fox) you would be well aware that Sarah "Barracuda" Palin is under some well deserved fire(zero pun) for marking with cross hairs Gabrielle Giffords district to be taken out (with her in it) because of her vote for helathcare reform. To make matters worse for Palin in March of 2010 Mrs. Gifford while on MSNBC spoke in prophetic manner about the violent imagery of herself and others depicted on Sarah's website and on her facebook page. Sarah, never one to hold her tounge was uncharacteristically quiet and absent from public view upon Saturdays events. There were more Waldo sitings in the subsequent days than there were Palin tweets or facebook status updates. Were it not for the tragic loss of life and the trail of very serious injuries the shooter Jared Lee Loughner would be lauded for doing something that no one has been able to do since John McCain unleashed Frankenbitch on America--he shut her up for four days straight.
So when Mama Bear comes out of her self-imposed four day hibernation, you would think that she'd be a little contrite and show a hint of humility, but nope; In an eight minute Internet video response she cowardly and shamelessly excoriated the media for suggesting that the vitriolic hyperbolic rage that she, Glenn Beck and the Tea Party have been force feeding America be curtailed. She did not retreat from her ominous cross-hair propaganda hit, she instead reloaded on more of the same incoherent self serving patronage that she's become known for. The infamous road to no where must intersect with the high road because Sarah seems to have rejected them both in this eight minute diatribe of nothingness where she seemingly exacerbated her public relations (among us sane folk) problem by making an ill-timed, ill-fated and quite honestly inexplicable reference to her being made out to be a blood libel. Congressman James Clyburn summed it up best when he said that she was intellectually incapable of understanding the Arizona shootings.
Just to be clear Sarah Palin, Beck and the Tea Party are NOT responsible for the dastardly deeds of Jared Lee Loughner. Those crimes are 100 percent the fault of Lee and his obvious mental short comings. What Sarah and her band of angry crack pots are guilty of is setting up and maintaining a climate of hate, fear, anger and misinformation. Their failure to understand the causal link between violent or suggestively violent rhetoric and violence actually playing itself out in random order makes them guilty by participation. Some of them are willfully so and the others are ignorantly so. Whatever the case they are most certainly a large part of the problem and nothing close to being a solution for anything wrong with this country.
The Historical Links Between Rhetoric and Violence
If Sarah and Glenn are honestly unaware of the disastrous effects of their negative and even vile commentary they need only ask their network mate and fellow propagandist (albeit on a part-time basis) Juan Williams. Even if he is too caught up in the Fox hole to speak truth to the powers that be, they could re-visit his Eyes on the Prize documentary. They will see that before Medgar Evers was killed, he was overtly and publicly threatened. Before JFK was killed he recieved a plethora of threats. The same is the case for his brother Bobby as well as Martin Luther King Jr. Many years ago Louis Fharakkan apologized to Betty Shabazz (widow of Malcolm X) for his role in the death of Malcolm. He did not apologize to her for pulling the trigger or even ordering the trigger to be pulled. He apologized for helping to create an environment of pure hatred for Malcolm---one that ultimately led to his assassination.
Today we see the same kind of hateful vibrations enveloping America. In addition to the obligatory threats (if you want to call a 400 percent spike in presidential threats post 1/20/09 obligatory) we have a congressmen yell out "You Lie" while the president was giving his State of The Union address; You have several other members of the House of Representatives legislatively questioning the sitting presidents birth place and birth rights, you have very influential radio/television hosts that call him a racist, Socialist, Marxist, Elitist, Communist, and a Fascist (all in the same hour). His most innocuous and previously considered non-partisan measures have been met with acrimony and conspiratorial speculation by the elected officials that he is forced to deal with in congress--people who have convinced themselves and the voters that vote for them that they should be angry, very angry. And their anger is replicated on television and radio day in and day out. You also have a speaker of the House that does not believe in the word compromise. So much so that he opted to pass on the free ride to the memorial on Air Force One to honor a house member and some fallen hero's only to go yuck it up at a cocktail party at the Washington National Harbor.
Sarah Palin's biggest mistake in her facebook video fail was not her ridiculous reference to blood libel or even her inappropriate reference to the good ole days when politicians settled disputes with dueling pistols(really Sarah?). Her biggest mistake was coming out of hiding and making a statement about the Tuscon tragedy on the eve of the presidents address on the topic. If ever there were a bigger more complete contrast between Obama and the woman gunning for his job, this was it. She came off petulant while he came off presidential. She spoke mostly about her self and he spoke about the victims in a manner that made the audience feel as if he really knew them. He showed that he really did care about the victims of this tragedy and she showed that she only cares about her spiraling public image and made her self out to be the biggest victim. He showed that he truly wishes to unite the country and change the tone and tenor in Washington and she is hell bent on ostracizing those that don't agree with her and along with her guns and bibles she wishes to cling to the vitriolic rhetoric that she burst on the scene with in 2008. He lost that Tuscon district in 2008, she and McCain won it. He has that district on lock in 2012, she will not even be part of the conversation in 2012.
Obama in his address took the nation to a higher level at a time when our collective thoughts were in the doldrums'. Not only did he bring calm and peace to the loved ones of the victims, he called on rest of the country to speak and act with higher ideals. In that very instant he disarmed (at least temporarily) and moreover made less prosperous the biggest weapon formed against him--Propaganda and hate speak.
Hate will continue to beget hate, but love conquers all. Thank you Mr. President
The Calm Voice That always Prevails
Sarah Palin's biggest mistake in her facebook video fail was not her ridiculous reference to blood libel or even her inappropriate reference to the good ole days when politicians settled disputes with dueling pistols(really Sarah?). Her biggest mistake was coming out of hiding and making a statement about the Tuscon tragedy on the eve of the presidents address on the topic. If ever there were a bigger more complete contrast between Obama and the woman gunning for his job, this was it. She came off petulant while he came off presidential. She spoke mostly about her self and he spoke about the victims in a manner that made the audience feel as if he really knew them. He showed that he really did care about the victims of this tragedy and she showed that she only cares about her spiraling public image and made her self out to be the biggest victim. He showed that he truly wishes to unite the country and change the tone and tenor in Washington and she is hell bent on ostracizing those that don't agree with her and along with her guns and bibles she wishes to cling to the vitriolic rhetoric that she burst on the scene with in 2008. He lost that Tuscon district in 2008, she and McCain won it. He has that district on lock in 2012, she will not even be part of the conversation in 2012.
Obama in his address took the nation to a higher level at a time when our collective thoughts were in the doldrums'. Not only did he bring calm and peace to the loved ones of the victims, he called on rest of the country to speak and act with higher ideals. In that very instant he disarmed (at least temporarily) and moreover made less prosperous the biggest weapon formed against him--Propaganda and hate speak.
Hate will continue to beget hate, but love conquers all. Thank you Mr. President
