the names of the six souls who lost their lives yesterday just because they participated in democracy.
Gabe Zimmerman, a 30-year-old aide to the congresswoman who was recently engaged.
Christina Taylor Green, a 9-year-old girl who had just been elected to her school’s student council.
U.S. District Court Chief Judge John Roll
Dorothy Morris, 76
Dorwin Stoddard, 76
Phyllis Scheck, 79.
Sarah Palin’s target scope was just as much on their backs as they were on Giffords.
Gabby Giffords and six others remain in the hospital fighting for their lives, all because of gun violence, all because calls for political violence is our new normal.
You have seen our typical conservative and Republican commentators push back on those facts last night in the comments. David Anderson says the shooter rejected the Bible and loved Communism. Dave Burris demanded that false equivalency rule the day, saying the both sides are equal in their incitements to violence. Well, unfortunately for him and others, and to my utmost chagrin, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachmann and the countless other right wing officials and media figures have way more power, stature and influence than myself. When that was pointed out to Burris, he danced so fast you would have thought his partner was Bristol Palin on Dancing with the Stars.
But really, the push back misses the point. The right will concentrate on the killer’s motives, which are as clear as mud. An acolyte of active dreaming, which I am told is a right wing notion somehow, although I always thought conservatives couldn’t dream, he lists the Communist Manifesto as one of his favorite books, as he does with Ayn Rand and Mein Kampf, a very divergent reading list politically speaking. His quotes on MySpace and YouTube reveal a radical against the government, debt and the gold standard (right wing notions), as well as the police and religion (left wing notions). So each sides have motives to play with.
If this is game.
Keith reminds us it is not:
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I asked our conservative readers to take that pledge last night. They refused, either directly or by their silence.
It is really a simple pledge: stop inciting violence, and apologize in the past when you have. I have in the past said something that could incite violence. I apologized repeatedly for it, then, now and continuously. Keith Olbermann searched his conscious and discovered that he too had said something that could incite violence, or at the very least employed violent imagery in pursuit of a political point. He apologized in the video.
Using violent imagery is so very easy in politics. We all have done it. It is so easy that I almost used the word “ammunition” above when discussing the motives of the terrorist, in that both sides had enough ammunition to point fingers. So this will be a hard habit to break. Especially when an election was just won by employing violence. Violent imagery, rhetoric and threats were a rallying tool for the Republican Party, a tool used to align itself with the calls for violence from the fringe Teabaggers over the last two years so that they could indicate their staunch opposition to President Obama. And the more violent the rhetoric, the more staunch the opposition.
But it is a habit we must as a society break. If we don’t, the violence will continue. More Democrats will surely be shot at by other killers emboldened by Tuscon. And maybe some Republicans will face gunshots by radicals on the left out for revenge.
To prevent it is very simple. All it requires is the swallowing of some pride. It requires apologies from those who have engaged in violent rhetoric. It requires pledges to never again engage in such rhetoric.
And that is all.
So simple.
So easy.
And yet, I will give you odds that it will not ever happen.
And so down the rabbit hole we go.