Like a Hole in the Head
Six people are dead, pointlessly. A middle-of-the-road Arizona congresswoman is in intensive care with a bullet hole through her brain. It’s less than 24 hours since a young man shot her and 18 other people outside a Tucson Safeway, and already the politicians, pundits, Facebook posters, and miscellaneous nutballs are going at it with a vengeance.
Liberals are tying the attack to the increasingly violent rhetoric coming from the Tea Party wing of the Republican party. Almost en masse, they are reminding us of Sarah Palin’s “in the crosshairs” web page and Sharron Angle’s suggestion we adopt “Second Amendment Remedies.” They are reminding us that while Tea Partiers didn’t squeeze the trigger, they bear some responsibility for what happened yesterday, because as everyone from Keith Olbermann to Gary Hart is reminding us, words have consequences. Indeed they do.
Almost simultaneously, Republicans including John Boehner and Sarah Palin herself have issued statements calling the shooting tragic and inhuman. One could be forgiven for feeling these press releases are just a tad disingenuous. Republicans in general, and Tea Partiers most of all, have profited mightily from the anger of the hoi polloi, and indeed they have fanned that smoldering rage into flame again and again. Aristotle said that one of the best weapons the orator has in his arsenal is the rage of his listeners. All he has to do is remind them of it, suggest a plausible object, and wait for them to attack. This is a skill at which the hate- and fear-mongering Rasputins who fund and manipulate the Tea Party Nation excel.
There is absolutely no question that even if Jared Loughner was deranged, he, and people like him who commit violent acts in the name of some political or moral “cause,” take encouragement and justification from the hate-filled rhetoric of the Tea Partiers. I certainly hope (though I’m not optimistic) that the same people arguing that violence in movies causes violence in real life will admit that it’s far more likely for someone to feel okay about shooting people after listening to actual people advocating actual violence, even if it is in a “plausibly deniable” way.
However, though liberals and moderate lefties and Democratic Party apparatchiks are mouthing off Pavlovianesquely with all the outrage, heartbreak and recrimination that the playbook seems to demand, I find it all rings pretty hollow. And here’s why.
Everything that happens in this country happens because we the people let it happen. Could there be a more obvious truth than this? Everything the Republicans do happens because the lily-livered Democrats let it happen. We are complicit in what happened in Tucson, even though it feels more comfy to get enraged at the Tea Partiers and Sarah Palin. Sure, they’re easy targets, and they deserve whatever they get. But what do we actually do to combat them? What are we willing to sacrifice? In what way do we take our citizenship seriously? Do a few Facebook posts really do the trick? We are all necessary parts of this system, and by our silence we enable it. By our ignorance, we allow it.
“Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.” -- Dorothy Day
The Democratic Party in this country stands for nothing. Zero. Bupkis. It is, and has been for a long while, indistinguishable from the Republican Party. If you think the two parties represent essentially different principles and ideologies, you haven’t been paying attention. There is no sense in which we still live in a democracy. That fine dream has left the building. If you think that what happened, and what is yet to happen, with health care, Iraq, the environment, poverty, education, the economy is all the fault of someone else, you are clearly part of the problem. Most of us white, pseudo-middle-class, pseudo-educated folks are simply too fat and happy to rouse ourselves into action anymore. We like our stuff, our house, our pets, our cozy little situation. We revel in our impotence.
Gabrielle Giffords got shot in the head so we could have these things.
We are so drugged by our TVs and computers, so exhausted and demoralized by our jobs, so alienated from our communities, so incapable of making sense of the unfathomable amount of information that comes our way each minute, that we turn our heads from the truth of what is happening all around us. But what can we do? After all. What can we do? (cue hand-wringing)
(I do not in any way exempt myself from this.)
And because it is the easiest course, we do exactly what those we abhor most do: We find an enemy, we hold it responsible for the terrible things we witness, for the dull ache of terror and loss inside us, and we turn our rage towards it. We are Jared Loughner. We have lost hope, we are more painfully bitter and cynical about our country than we can consciously admit. We dare not think it. All we have anymore is the “other.” The enemy, the monster, the multinational corporations, the corrupt politicians, the unspeakably ignorant masses. They are doing this terrible thing to us.
The greatest challenge of the day is: How to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us? -- Dorothy Day
Gabrielle Giffords is no great national figure. She is a moderate, which means she’s basically a soft-core Republican, which is what most Democrats have to be to win elections in this political environment. She’s one of many politicians just like her. If we rally around this sad, ugly event, get our dander up about it, it’s not because she was a shining light, a Bobby Kennedy, a Paul Wellstone. It’s either because of the political hay we can make of it, another disgusting exploitation of a human tragedy for our own gain, or because it allows us to feel a little righteous indignation. It allows us to vent at the most obviously hateful sectors of our society and maybe feel just a little superior to them.
Anyone who wants to do something honorable in the wake of this shooting, something hard, something real, should quit slathering about the Tea Partiers and just stop making them possible through our own apathy, selfishness and laziness. Instead of all this sentimental vomit and self-righteous pontification.
I’d have more respect for someone who was honest enough to say, “I don’t give a shit.” A lot more.