The Other Hands on the Barrel
Politicians and commentators have been quick to caution that the horrific shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and more than a dozen others was likely less a political act than the work of a deranged individual, and we’re sure to hear more such bromides in the days ahead.
It’s rubbish.
Those who are mentally unhinged act out their bizarre delusions in idiosyncratic and sometimes taboo or illegal ways, but they draw their vocabulary, their imagery and their preoccupations from their culture. However grotesquely distorted the expression, the reference points or cues are all around them … and us.
In shootings such as the one in Tucson, when there’s a long history of overtly violent political rhetoric and winking dare-yous, one young, possibly deranged man may pull the trigger, but there are many other, more respected hands on the barrel. Those “co-conspirators” in the Arizona shooting include Sarah Palin, her similarly extreme colleagues, the followers inflamed by their histrionics and the more circumspect politicians who have given her and the movement she represents their passive or active support to further their own careers.
That Sarah Palin put Representative Giffords in her crosshairs is not a matter of conjecture. This 2010 gaphic from her PAC’s website says it all:
We’d all like to believe our shared narrative of civil democratic discourse, but those who choose to further their careers with vitriolic, highly personal, even violent rhetoric and graphics and melodramatic theatrics must share the blame, if not the legal culpability, for the shooting that followed a tragically predictable course.
In the coming days, we can expect politicians and
Read more »