No one could have predicted…
Beyond expressing my sorrow for the lost and injured and all those affected by this tragedy, I have little to say about the horrific events in Arizona yesterday except one thing. Regular Mep readers / listeners will know all of us here put a high value on communication and the power of rhetoric; the two greatest speakers of the twentieth century (arguably) were Martin Luther King and Adolf Hitler, and I don’t think anyone needs a cheat sheet to determine which person pursued the good and which the evil. What yesterday conclusively, definitively proves is that rhetoric is not an unalloyed good. It is a neutral tool, and it has consequences.
When a group of people, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, spew the same kind of language–“target,” “reload,” “crosshairs,” “bullets of justice,” and on and on–it is only a matter of time until the consequences are felt. And calling for civility “on both sides,” when the simple truth is that one side calls for violent, bloody revolution and the other calls for immediate legal remedy, is a colossal and shameful cop-out. Yesterday’s events are the absolutely predictable result of the dog whistles the Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs, and Sarah Palins of the world blow at every opportunity only to raise their hands in mock horror when something (vandalizing property, death threats, shooting 18 people including a federal judge and a congresswoman–execution style, in the head) happens as a result.
Don’t be fooled. Don’t allow political leadership to make the false equivalency between the rhetoric “on both sides.” No such equivalency exists. Don’t allow pundits to claim “it’s a stretch” that publishing a map with crosshairs over specific people and waving around automatic rifles to get the approval of a gun-obsessed culture leads directly to violence. It isn’t a stretch. This is more than shouting fire in a crowded theater. It’s taking a can of gasoline and a box of matches, setting them down next to the theater and giving the people outside a meaningful look before turning your back and walking away.
It’s criminal. It’s evil. But most of all it is absolutely, completely, utterly predictable, and the purveyors of such shameless rhetoric know it. It is up to us and the rest of our supposedly civil society to call them out on it before they bring that society crashing down upon us. Speech has consequences. It’s time we acknowledge not only the effects of violence–but the cause.
[…] eight full months after being shot in the head by a political terrorist (who could hear the dog whistle from his house), Rep. Gabrielle Giffords made a surprise appearance today to vote for the debt ceiling plan. I […]