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Why we should instead look within
After Saturday's tragic shooting in Tucson, some have pointed the finger at inflammatory political rhetoric.
Many singled out Sarah Palin's now-infamous "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!" tweet and her 'Crosshairs' campaign map, which included Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' district, as a sign that some politicians have gone too far in stoking vitriol against their political opponents. (Since the shooting, Palin reportedly emphasized in an email that she "hates violence.") Others reject any connection between the shooter, who does not appear to espouse any coherent ideology, and our current political climate.
What are the ethical and moral implications of incendiary political language?
Violence, like the weekend shooting in Arizona, is scary. Random violence, like the death of nine year-old Christina Green who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time this weekend is particularly terrifying.
In the face of such terror, we seek reasons and explanations. We want to know who and what is to blame, hoping that if we could figure that out and make it go away, we would be free of such horrors as the mass murder which occurred in a Tucson shopping center just 48 hours ago.
I appreciate that impulse, and even indulged it for a while, seeking to figure out who created the context which enabled and empowered the accused shooter, Jared Loughner. According to the AP, "Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik described the gunman as mentally unstable," so accepting that we were not going to solve the problem of mental illness in the immediate future, I, like so many of us, wanted to find something we could address.
Like most people experiencing a moment of powerlessness and pain, I wanted something I could point to, something I could do something about. I found that "something" in Sarah Palin's gun crosshairs ads. I wanted to lash out about the ways in which the Tucson shooting and the critical wounding of Rep. Gabby Giffords was a natural outcome of portraying her district in Ms. Palin's crosshairs.
Read more at For God's Sake
By
Brad Hirschfield
|
January 11, 2011; 10:54 AM ET
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Posted by: BillKeller | January 16, 2011 9:29 PM
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How should one view fellow citizens who have differing political opinions? Are they misinformed, stupid or evil? Or are they just seeing the world through different eyes?
Thanks for taking the test.
Posted by: edbyronadams | January 11, 2011 1:43 PM
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'Do not do to another what is hateful to yourself'...maybe we need to expand this to "Do not enable another to commit a crime that is hateful to yourself."