I’m getting some hits over two previous posts (Gabrielle Giffords and Political Violence). As is often the case, the criticisms were emailed directly to me rather than left here as blog comments. Which ordinarily would mean you wouldn’t get to see them. It seems a bit like censorship to me, getting reasoned criticism from friends, responding to them, and not sharing it with the rest of you who read this blog (all three of you). So I’m going to post the exchange here, leaving out names.
First, from a conservative friend in Tucson:
Subject: Knee-jerk reaction
Your feelings rather than your intellect seem to be affecting your writing. i.e., your initial and follow up comments in your blog regarding the terrible tragedy that occurred in Tucson this weekend. Here are some words that are more accurate an appraisal of the situation: http://www.caivn.org/article/2011/01/11/blame-tragic-arizona-shooting-was-premature-misplaced
Subject: Re: Political Violence
I read your blog on Political Violence and wasn’t going to respond because I could hear the hurt and anger, and as you said, “this post is going to go all over the map because I’m still in shock, angry and incoherent.” I share many of the same feelings, plus a surge of despair.
There was another reason. You are one of the most original thinkers I have met, and this wasn’t the Paul Woodford I know.
May I offer you this? We are a culture that seeks causation, and in a time of stress, look for the easy, quick answers. In my experience, there are no quick, easy answers. In this case, there is plenty of blame to go around and it is a time for adult leadership, which is the cause of my despair. That seems to be the one commodity we are lacking.
What happened in Tucson was a tragedy because of the bright, shining lights we lost. I can only hope and pray (yes, I do pray in my simple-minded way) that we, as a people, have the intelligence and courage to learn from this and come together for the common good. But my common sense tells me that we will be right back at square one in ten weeks, tops.
I appreciate the criticism, and I take my friends’ points. I value their opinions because they help me recognize weaknesses in my arguments and sharpen my thinking.
Here’s my answer, for what it’s worth. I hope the discussion continues, not just the one between me and my readers, but the national discussion as well.
Dear Friends,
Yes, my feelings were and are running strong, but I’m trying to think things through as well. There’s more to what I wrote than a simple liberal knee-jerk.
Most people, me included, see a clear connection between threats of physical violence against politicians and judges, loose gun laws, and crazy people who go on politically-motivated shooting sprees. I read the article you linked to, and in return I’ll recommend once again the article at this link: http://www.csgv.org/issues-and-campaigns/guns-democracy-and-freedom/insurrection-timeline. The author is primarily concerned about the connection between loose gun laws and political killings, but the connection between right-wing hate radio and political killings comes through loud and clear as he goes through incident after incident, sticking strictly to the facts.
On the issue of balance, aka the “both sides do it” argument: sure there are murderous types on the left — SDS still exists, I hear, and there are radical and violent underground anti-global trade and environmental movements. They start riots at G8 meetings and bomb power stations. There are people like Ted Kaczynski and the anthrax killer. But they are not Democrats. The Democratic Party denounces them and wants nothing to do with them. The murderous types on the right, on the other hand, are mixed in with the Tea Party, the birthers, the 10th Amendment/states’ rights/sovereign citizen movement, and the militias, and the Republican Party has welcomed them all into the fold. The GOP plays to them and embraces them. When they show up at political events with pistols and assault weapons, carrying placards threatening 2nd Amendment remedies and flashing “liberal hunting licenses,” you don’t hear prominent Republican leaders denouncing them.
Let me back this up with something George Packer posted to The New Yorker today:
In fact, there is no balance—none whatsoever. Only one side has made the rhetoric of armed revolt against an oppressive tyranny the guiding spirit of its grassroots movement and its midterm campaign. Only one side routinely invokes the Second Amendment as a form of swagger and intimidation, not-so-coyly conflating rights with threats. Only one side’s activists bring guns to democratic political gatherings. Only one side has a popular national TV host who uses his platform to indoctrinate viewers in the conviction that the President is an alien, totalitarian menace to the country. Only one side fills the AM waves with rage and incendiary falsehoods. Only one side has an iconic leader, with a devoted grassroots following, who can’t stop using violent imagery and dividing her countrymen into us and them, real and fake. Any sentient American knows which side that is; to argue otherwise is disingenuous.
I’m not surprised that some on the left are seizing on the Giffords shootings as an opportunity to stop Sarah Palin. They perceive her as a dangerous woman. That’s not my motivation, but it’s an understandable one. And she sure as hell would jump on it if the shoe were on the other foot.
I know the right isn’t going to change. I know the gun laws aren’t going to change. I know AM talk radio and Fox News aren’t going to change.
But maybe, if people say “enough” and keep the pressure on, the mainstream media will change. I want NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, NPR, the New York Times, and the Washington Post to do their damn jobs. I want them, instead of nodding along, to start fact-checking statements and assertions made by newsmakers, politicians, and commentators on all sides of the political debate, and start saying who’s telling the truth and who is not. I want them to abandon their present style of passive “he said/she said” reporting. I want them, when they’re reporting on the conflict between scientists and climate change deniers, to say which side has the facts behind it and which side is full of shit.
That’s what I want to see happen, and that’s why I’m blogging about what happened Saturday. Because the MSM is already bowing down to powerful people who want us all to forget there’s a connection between threats of physical violence against politicians and judges, loose gun laws, and crazy people who go on politically-motivated shooting sprees. If we don’t call them on it, they’ll revert to form, and as my friend says, “we will be right back at square one in ten weeks, tops.”
A couple of points:
When Muslim terrorists attacked our citizens, we looked hard at the things that may have influenced them: mosques, madrassas, firebrand imams, underground organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood. And we went after the agents of influence, not just the perpetrators. Shit, we invaded two countries, and are thinking about going into Yemen and Iran!
Suppose there was a Black Panther radio network whipping up African-American resentment against the white oppressor, and some modern-day H. Rap Brown comes along and shoots a white cop. Think we’d call him a “lone wacko,” chuck him in a jail cell, and let it go at that? Hell no, we’d go after the Black Panthers and the radio network too. And rightly so.
But when home-grown white terrorists go on shooting rampages, we shrug our shoulders and go back to business as usual. It wasn’t Muslims or Black Panthers who egged them on, it was other white people. We don’t want to go there. So we don’t take action, and then we act all shocked the next time it happens, and the time after that.
The elephant in the room is the loosening of gun restrictions, an area where Arizona’s running ahead of the pack. I honestly don’t know what to do about that, and that’s why I didn’t stress it. I have no solutions. Any politician who goes up against the NRA is toast, so I don’t expect change on that front.
On the Rush Limbaugh/Armed Forces Radio Network thing. This doesn’t have anything to do with the shootings on Saturday, but it does have something to do with Gabrielle Giffords, and is personal as well. It is a small, concrete step that I can take.
I started thinking about this back in 1999 when an active-duty lieutenant colonel, an A-10 squadron commander at DM, said to me of Bill Clinton, then the president, “He ain’t my commander in chief!” Call me naive, but I was shocked. You don’t say things like that in the military. You work for the CINC. You took an oath.
At that time I was conducting flying safety training at USAF fighter bases in Korea and Japan. I’d hear Rush Limbaugh on AFRN. He was and is enormously popular with the troops. After Obama was elected and Limbaugh started saying things like “I hope he fails” and joking around about military coups, I looked up the AFRN broadcast schedule on the internet. Yep, they were still airing Limbaugh’s show. Now what Rush says to a civilian audience is his business and is absolutely protected by the 1st Amendment. But the military is different. The president is not just another politician to military personnel, he’s the commander in chief, and I can’t believe military authorities overseas are allowing a hatemonger with a huge radio audience among the troops to foment contempt and disrespect for the CINC. If I were the boss it would have been stopped a long time ago.
I wrote a letter to the USAF chief of staff two years ago, asking him to take the idea of pulling Limbaugh’s show from AFRN to the rest of the joint chiefs. I never got an answer, so early last year I contacted my congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords. She made an official congressional request out of it, and I finally got an answer. It was an evasive non-answer, about what I expected, but it was an answer. This time I’m going to write to the SecDef and CJCS. I’ll keep after it, because I think it’s right and important.
Warm Regards,
Paul
p.s. Don’t taze me, bro!
p.p.s. Did you know Gabrielle Giffords is a motorcyclist and co-chair of the Congressional Motorcycle Safety Caucus?
