Two things. One, t
his post is going to go all over the map because I’m still in shock, angry and incoherent. Two, what I have to say is mostly personal, not meant to be a recap of news you’ve already heard elsewhere.
We all know what happened in Tucson this Saturday was political. Politicians and media figures will try to convince us otherwise, but we know better. You shoot a politician, it’s political.
The young man who pulled the trigger appears to be off his rocker, but there’s also evidence he planned his actions beforehand and was indeed gunning for Representative Gabrielle Giffords. Sanity aside, I think most people see a clear connection between the shootings, the loosening of gun ownership and carrying restrictions, and the violent rhetoric that has taken over the Republican Party.
Yes, the Republican Party. Everyone wants to point fingers at extremists and teabaggers, but extremists and teabaggers are the preferred base of the GOP today, and moderate GOP politicians have been pushed out. The Republican Party adopted, encouraged, and played to these assholes, and now they are them.
And don’t be coy about loosened gun restrictions and violent political rhetoric. You know exactly what I’m talking about. From the Supreme Court’s District of Columbia v. Heller ruling of 2008, through a series of murders and attempted assassinations of people and politicians branded as leftist or socialist by talk radio, through the incredibly hostile and anti-democratic Republican-backed intimidation at congressional town hall meetings in 2009 and 2010, to right-wing thugs openly carrying guns (and placards threatening murder and assassination) at political rallies, to Republican politicians embracing violent eliminationist rhetoric during the most recent congressional campaigns, the American right — and most particularly the Republican Party — has created a monster. They own Saturday’s shootings in Tucson, lock, stock, and barrel. They know it, everybody knows it.
I support the right to keep and bear arms, and am a gun owner myself. But I’ve heard too much rhetoric about “watering the tree of liberty” and “Second Amendment remedies” not to face the reality that some among us think the right to keep and bear arms implies the right to assassinate politicians and judges they don’t agree with.
Talk show hosts and politicians who talk about “taking out” and “getting rid of” opposition politicians and judges, who use gun-related phraseology and images in their posters and TV ads, had to have known what kind of trouble they were stirring up, had to have known they were playing with fire. You can tell by their quick reaction to Saturday’s shootings — pulling inflammatory posts from Facebook pages, trying to walk back gun-related campaign imagery, threatening Tucson Sheriff Dupnik for speaking out against violent rhetoric, laughable attempts to brand the shooter as a radical leftist — that they feel the wet warmth of the blood on their hands.
And it’s not just talk show hosts and politicians. It’s also Fox News, which drums up hatred around the clock. Sadly, it’s also the mainstream corporate media. Jealous of Fox’s high ratings, they snatch ratings of their own by breathlessly rebroadcasting every insane conspiracy theory and violent threat uttered by Fox, hate radio hosts, and right-wing politicians, thereby accelerating the debasement of American political debate. They have blood on their hands too, and they know it. They’ll spend the next two weeks furiously peddling the “lone wacko” narrative, and the guests on all the talking head shows will be Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle apologists.
And how do you suppose Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage & company will defend themselves? They’ll double down, of course. They’ll probably also mount a campaign to have Tucson’s Sheriff Dupnik removed from office, and to have Arizona Governor Brewer appoint Gifford’s opponent in the recent election, Jesse Kelly, to serve out Gifford’s term. And who will call them on it? No Republican politicians. These guys have got a lot invested in their teabagger base, and they’re not about to drive them away.
Will the media call them on it? After the initial shock, don’t expect to hear many media voices calling for change. They’re going to go into protect-the-status-quo mode, and in fact have already started. Fox News and right-wing talk radio make millions stirring up the bigots and the stupids, and the MSM can’t resist piggybacking on Fox’s success.
But most of us see the problem. There’s an undeniable connection between loose gun laws, violent political rhetoric, and violence itself. That these things come together in Arizona — a state that, in Sheriff Dupnik’s words, has become a “mecca for prejudice and bigotry” — is no surprise.
So . . . what to do, what to do?
Well, Republicans, Fox News, hate radio, and the MSM aren’t going to change. Arizona’s gun laws, if anything, will become even more permissive, as hard as that may be to believe. The bigots and the stupids aren’t going anywhere. But maybe informed people will start calling out violent political speech when they encounter it, and let political and media leaders know they will no longer support them if they engage in it. I certainly will.
I’m also going to re-engage the Department of Defense and military leaders on removing Rush Limbaugh’s show from overseas Armed Forces Radio broadcasts. That’s one concrete action I can take.
Last year Gabrielle Giffords (who is my representative) initiated a congressional action on my behalf on this issue, and we did not get a satisfactory response from military leaders. She offered to re-engage, and I said “let me think about it.” Chickenshit me, I was afraid someone high up would come after my military retirement pay to shut me up. Now I’m pissed, and I’m going back, this time to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen.
Limbaugh, long the lead hater, a man no Republican dares cross, daily heaps contempt on President Barack Obama and Democrats in the Senate, the House, and state governorships. That is his right. But when Armed Forces Radio airs his show to troops overseas, they’re helping Limbaugh whip up disrespect and contempt among the troops toward their commander-in-chief, and toward civilian authority in general. In a military context, it’s sedition, and the military needs to take that show off the air. Soldiers, sailors, and airmen don’t have the same kinds of rights civilians do, and they for sure don’t have the right to listen to sedition when they’re on duty. Troops overseas are on duty 24/7.
I’m back in the game, Gabby, and I hope you’ll be there to help me again.