Although I have written two blogs in my political one, Rainy Day Things, which is bookmarked alongside here, regarding the Tucson shooting of a United States Representative, Gabrielle Giffords, I hadn't planned to write any here. When I write about it, it's been in a rant mode that has me so angry I am lucky to write anything coherently.
But then Nance alerted me that a regular blogger, a woman from Tucson, was among those shot at the event. Here is the lady's blog for anybody who would like to go there and voice their support-- The Burrows.
What has hit me so hard about this is the twin assault on us as a people. This was in our neighborhoods; and it is the kind of thing any of us, who are politically informed and concerned, could be at. Some of us were.
The little girl who was killed was interested in being politically involved. She was on her Student Council. She cared. She got invited on the spur of a moment and now she's dead for caring. And don't bother telling me it was just part of a melee. A nine-year old child shot in the chest was deliberately targeted.
The blogger, so many of us know as Ashleigh Burroughs, was shot three times because she was beside the Congresswoman, because she is a caring citizen who wants to support her government not tear it apart.
The judge was another who just decided to stop by to thank Giffords for her support for his work in immigration cases and he wasn't even a Democrat.
Representative Giffords was a blue dog Democrat which means no extreme leftie. She was targeted and those alongside her for one reason-- an attack on our system of government.
And for anybody who wants to tell me otherwise, I don't want to hear from you and won't even be posting the dissent at this time. The man who did this shooting was clearly a mentally deranged individual but those who provoked his anger, provided the fuel for his rage, they likely weren't...
I am really angry about this and at the types of threats that some fling around so carelessly. It's time to stand up for what we believe or let ourselves lose it all. In this country, we settle our differences at the ballot box, not with the bullet. We should argue for our viewpoints, express differences of opinion on issues, but avoid character attacks that can lead to a deranged person taking it a step further.
10 comments:
It was a terrible tragedy that we shpuld all take to heart!
I agree, Paul. I hope you will read my Rainy Day Things for today too about two parts to this that I hope people will think long and hard on. I am putting all of that there because I want to recognize it as important, but our own lives, what we do to make the energy around us healthy and happy, that is important also and sometimes we have to separate things to do that. We can't dwell on anger, fear and vitriol all the time and not find it impacting our physical health. There is more to life than that but it is important to acknowledge what has happened and think what we can do as a nation to turn it around before there is a next time. I sure don't want a police state nor do I want us to limit freedom of speech but maybe we can not let those who put out the hate profit from it. So much of this is about profit.
Thanks for posting the link to Ashleigh Burrough's blog. It's makes it seem even that much more personal that a fellow blogger was shot. It could have been any one of us.
The new mantra: Debate, not hate.
I don't want to dismiss the seriousness of our feelings about the attack from within our own people. Anger is valid. It is what we do with that anger that ultimately make or break us. I hear the opinion that all government officials are corrupt. The belfief in ourselves has been wounded. I don't know how to fix our self image.
Someone told me they went to Fox News yesterday to see what they were saying, if they were taking any responsibility for the negative rhetoric and their stand was to attack Tucson's sheriff for what he said about the climate of bigotry and hate. Figures...
I'm glad you wrote about this, Rain, and said what you did. Those who promote this hate talk should be held responsible for their part in pushing an unbalanced person over the edge.
Assassination of a public official is a political act, no matter how crazy the perpetrator. The political climate comes from political talk.
I agree that we have had a climate of vitriol from both sides of the political debate. But she was a conservative Democrat. Like you said the judge that was killed was a Republican, so I disagree that this event had anything to do with the vitriol between the parties in Washington. The shooter is a nut-job that decided to end his life in a blaze of gunfire. Sadly he did not succeed in ending his own life, only that of a bunch of innocent people. She was targeted as a member of Congress not as a Democrat or Republican member of Congress.
Maybe the case could be made that the climate of the "ruling class" that has been promoted by many politicians recently that they know better than the rest of us had something to do with the feelings of the gunman.
Everybody else there was targeted because they were seen as supporters of her and thereby deserving of death.
I've been hit enough with insults for what I support meaning who I am as a person to take this generically. She was the target and as a conservative democrat, she had taken some liberal views but I think his hate for her went back further. Read my other blog on this.
If he had only wanted to kill her though, he'd have done that. He wanted to kill those who thought she was someone to support and that's the issue here. It is an assault on our government and I'd say the same thing if this happened to Michelle Bachmann.
In my other blog is a link to articles about him and his nutty ideas. We won't likely know all the places from where he got his thinking, such as it was.
BUT the insulting and threatening rhetoric is rampant and right now it's worse from the right. If you read the blog that Sullivan put out where he live blogged the events, he got a threat in the midst of it from one who didn't like what he was saying.
I don't have moderation on this blog for spam or people like you who dissent but do so without nastiness or threats. It's the very few who aren't ones I want their words to see the light of day.
The rhetoric has to be turned to the issues and not the people. Anything else feeds the nutcases, some of whom are insane but some of who are sane but just so filled with anger that they strike out wherever they can. The nasty stuff out there doesn't help any of us in this country whether it leads to shootings or not. I was glad to see Olbermann say he had to look at his own spiels. Everybody should. We can vehemently disagree on issues without demonizing someone else. When we do the latter, that's when sometimes a person further out on the edge, does something about the words.
Hear, hear, Rain, to your post and to your comment above.
That link to Ashleigh Burrough's blog was appreciated, Rain. It's hard to stay impersonal when you know people involved. I am so upset by all this and it will be interesting to find out more about what tipped an already unstable man over the edge. I'd like to blame certain irresponsible people in the tea party, but the vitriol seems to be coming from everywhere.
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