I can’t stop thinking about the Tucson shooting. I have even started talking to myself as I go about my day. In my one-on-one conversations I always come back to the same point about violence and rhetoric. Joe Scarborough, in a letter calling out Palin and Beck by name, puts my thoughts into words:
You weren’t personally responsible for the slaughter at the Safeway. Maybe you can put it on a poster at the next “Talkers” convention.
But before you and the pack of right-wing polemicists who make big bucks spewing rage on a daily basis congratulate yourselves for not being responsible for Jared Lee Loughner’s rampage, I recommend taking a deep breath. Just because the dots between violent rhetoric and violent actions don’t connect in this case doesn’t mean you can afford to ignore the possibility — or, as many fear, the inevitability — that someone else will soon draw the line between them.…
Now that the right has proved to the world that it was wronged, this would be a good time to prevent the next tragedy from destroying its political momentum. Despite what we eventually learned about the shooter in Tucson, should the right have really been so shocked that many feared a political connection between the heated rhetoric of 2010 and the shooting of Giffords?
Greg Sargent finishes is up. (Yes, shame on me for lazy blogging, but when someone does all the work so perfectly…)
Again, it’s wrong to blame anyone for the shooting. But ask yourself this. How many figures on the right have been willing to engage in any way on the broader question of whether it’s at least possible that our current climate could lead to future violence? How many conservatives have been willing to discuss the topic at all?
I’m going to stop talking to myself now.