What's Happening Here?

There are still over 100 unsolved murders from the Civil Rights era being investigated by the FBI, and scholars and experts place part of the blame for the violence and bloodshed of that period on the heated and violent rhetoric of demagogues like Alabama Governor George Wallace. Ironically, Wallace himself ended up the victim of violence as he ran for president in 1972 when he was shot at a shopping center in Maryland and left paralyzed. Words matter; they create a climate; they fill the heads of the disturbed where metaphors are taken literally and complaints about an opponent can sound like a request to be rid of that person.


Yet Sarah Palin posted a campaign map on her website for the 2010 midterm elections that "targeted" 20 Democratic Congressmen and women who voted in favor of health care reform. She marked each targeted Representative by placing the crosshairs of a gunsight over his or her district on the map. "Don't Retreat. RELOAD," she said. And now one of those 20, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), has been targeted literally. On Saturday a disturbed young man shot Rep. Giffords in the head at point blank range at a public event at a shopping center in Tucson. I don't necessarily think that this troubled twenty-two-year-old saw Palin's map and decided to help her out by "taking out" one of the twenty. But I do think that Palin contributed to our deeply troubled culture with her attitudes and her rhetoric and contributed to the gun-happiness of this young man just as surely as George Wallace fed the violent beast during the Civil Rights struggle.


This is not the first time that Sarah Palin has been blamed for violence in our society. It's not even the strongest case. Although the mainstream media did not make much of it, the foreign press and the US independent media reported that in the summer of 2008 during the presidential  campaign, the Secret Service reported a massive increase in death threats to then presidential candidate Barack Obama, and that they blamed Sarah Palin for it. Think back. This was the time when Palin was constantly questioning Obama's patriotism and accusing him of "palling around with terrorists" because of his tenuous association with William Ayers, even though when Ayers was a "terrorist," Obama was a small child, living in Hawaii with his grandparents. (Obama met Ayers in Chicago when they served on several boards together.) At Palin rallies, her fans shouted about Obama, "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!" I can remember the fear I had late in the campaign: "She's going to get him killed," I said to anyone who would listen. Palin continued this inflammatory rhetoric until she was told to tone it down by the McCain campaign.


The Secret Service says that threats against Obama are 400% greater than average. But there have been enough lies told about him and enough incendiary language coming from the Right to account for that. Weak and unstable minds have been driven mad with hatred for an Obama that doesn't really exist. He is not a "dictator" or a "vampire" who "needs a stake driven through the heart" or a "Nazi, Maxist, socialist." He is a native born American citizen, born in the state of Hawaii, but the language and content of birtherism has come out of the mouths even of members of Congress, who will not discourage the fever. He doesn't hate white people. He's not going to destroy the America of your childhood. He is not a socialist. He is not "coming for your guns." He is not deliberately trying to destroy the economy to pave the way for socialism. There are no "death panels" outside of that of Republican Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona. People who listen to these Right wing voices often don't know what's really in the health care bill. They don't know that Obama attended the United Church of Christ for over twenty years, that he is a Christian. I have acquaintances who recite a litany of false beliefs that are spread by the radical right and taken in uncritically by thousands of citizens. We call it Obama Derangement Syndrome, when just the mention of the man makes a person quite mad. In this atmosphere, White Supremacist militias have increased by 244% since 2009, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Who wouldn't expect political violence? And that is what terrorism is.  


Many others have contributed to the brew. Rep. Gregg Harper (R-MS) said, "We hunt liberal, tree-hugging Democrats." Sharron Angle, Republican Senate candidate from Nevada trying to unseat Harry Reid, called for "Second Amendment Remedies," should the vote not turn out to some folks' satisfaction. In 2008, E.D. Hill on Fox News call Mr. and Mrs. Obama's fist bump a "terrorist fist jab." Joe Wilson shouted out "You lie" disrespectfully during Obama's health care message in 2009. White Supremacist burned a Mexican flag in Arizona while police literally looked the other way and Mexican immigrants looked on. Signs showed up in 2008 and in 2010 saying, "If ballots don't work, bullets will" and variations on that theme. There's Limbaugh, Beck, who burned Pelosi in effigy, Savage, too many to list, filling the heads of the "low information voter" with outright lies about our President and our government, making them feel threatened, making them feel their way of life is threatened. I have friends who are Republican, who have an extremely conservative daughter who, when she learned I was a Democrat, said I was doing "the Devil's work." The "low information voter." Hmph.


A man showed up at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire wearing a T-shirt that read, "It's time to water the tree of liberty," with a pistol strapped to his thigh. His shirt slogan comes from the 1787 Thomas Jefferson quote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants." That and a pistol at a presidential appearance. Did he want to appear intimidating!!


There's Michelle Bachmann's "I want Minnesotans armed and dangerous."
There's Bill O'Reilly's "George Tiller, the baby killer."
Sharia law is coming, did you know?
Obama is intentionally destroying the economy, too, did you know?
One candidate said he wanted his opponent to be afraid to come out of his house.
There is so much more.


Yes, I hold the candidates and pundits who behaved this way responsible for creating a world where Gabby Giffords could be shot.

William Rivers Pitt wrote in Truthout:

"You false patriots who bring assault rifles to political rallies, you hack politicians and media personalities who lied through your stinking teeth about 'death panels' and 'Obama is coming for your guns' and 'He isn't a citizen' and 'He's a secret Muslim' and 'Sharia Law is coming to America,' you who spread this bastard gospel and you who swallowed it whole, I am talking to you, because this was your doing just as surely as it was the doing of the deranged damned soul who pulled the trigger. The poison you injected into our culture is deeply culpable for this carnage."