As American as the Disgruntled Loner

Been reading so much for the past few days on the shooting in Tucson, way too much. A little bit has been about the actual incident, but most of it is about trying to figure out if anyone besides the shooter is to blame. What caused him to do it? Talk radio? Mein Kampf? Mental illness? Smoking pot (Thanks, David Frum, for never ignoring the truly ridiculous)?

I’m hoping it makes people consider what kind of America they want to live in. Of course, I thought about that after the Oklahoma City Bombing, and after 9/11, that it might cause some soul-searching. I was wrong, or maybe I didn’t like the answer. Maybe the Price of Freedom (speech, guns, or from responsibility) is worth the price of a dead nine-yr-old, a federal judge, and some retirees. For some people, it probably is, but it’s time for everyone to come clean about it.

Come on, America — we KNOW ourselves. We know our neighbors and our second cousins. Do we really think that everyone here has evolved enough to resist being driven crazy by all this violent blather?

I’m glad Sarah Palin finally commented on the shooting, and not surprised that she acted defensively, meanly, lashing out against her critics instead of showing a little humanity and humility. Can you imagine what goes on in that head? Nine people dead, and still, it’s all about her. And to describe a media-manufactured “blood libel”? Good God, how ignorant. “Blood libel” — does anyone with more than a high school education vet her comments? I don’t know if I’m more repulsed by her ignorance or her narcissism, but the end result is the same. She’s shown herself to be incapable of responding to a crisis in any kind of useful way.

Of course, I don’t blame Palin for the shooting — she’s just the visible coiffed head of the GOP right now. She also happens to use violent rhetoric and images constantly, and loves showing off how poorly she can handle a hunting rifle. The whole conservative movement is to blame, for not calling out the elements within it that wave the bloody shirt and scream about revolution. I don’t blame the “Tea Partiers”–I blame SOME of the Tea Partiers who, in their rage that the country will soon have a non-white majority, wave their guns around and scream about taking their country back by force, “blood of tyrants watering the tree of liberty” and all that bullying crap. I’m glad that Rep. Clyburn from South Carolina pointed out the rhetorical calls for violence reminds him of the civil rights era, and how hot tempers and manipulative speeches can contribute to getting people killed.

Or as the guy at Driftglass said, It’s not just one of them, it’s ALL of them.

While there’s a bunch of renewed talk about gun control now, it will come to zilch. I doubt there will be even the slightest tightening of Arizona’s laws, about which I know nothing. We’ve been told giving up any gun rights will lead to tyranny, so now we’ll have to deal with the tyranny of fear.

What I would hope is that the massacre might start a conversation about mental illness and how we try and ignore it. We still don’t know if the shooter had had any type of treatment for what was happening to him, but we know for certain that nobody was surprised by his actions. His outbursts and his violent nihilism was obvious to everyone in his life, apparently. Was there any attempt to treat him? I read one story that half the people in his home county had had their treatments for mental illness discontinued this year. It’s not the common cold — you can’t tell people to “tough it out” and get on with their lives.

Ever since deinstitutionalism in the 1980s, we’ve all seen people wandering the streets who should be getting some psychiatric care. Do they all become assassins? Thankfully no, but the way we treat them as disposable is a reflection of how we value life in this country. We shouldn’t be surprised when someone acts savagely, when we treat so many people as less-than-human.

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