Last Saturday in Tuscon, AZ a lunatic with a gun allegedly fired 31 rounds into a crowd at a grocery store and critically wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), wounded 14 people, and killed 6, including a federal judge and a 9-year old girl.
The gunman, Jared Loughner, was apprehended at the scene and Rep. Giffords underwent surgery for a near-fatal wound to the head. Amazingly she is doing very well and as of tonight she is breathing without the aid of a ventilator and even opener her eyes. Indeed, she has been responsive despite the fact that the round went through her head from the back to the front.
What disgusts me, is the fact that before the clock struck midnight on Saturday, people in this country started throwing the blame around and what is crazy about that is that NOBODY has even considered the person who was tackled at the scene with a gun in his hand.
As insane as the act is to go through with such a thing, what's more insane to me is that even though Jared Loughner's name and smirking mugshot has been displayed over all the news networks, and his various internet ramblings...most of which indicated rants and railings against the government and particularly Gabrirlle Giffords, most of the blame has NOT been on him.
You see, Giffords is a Democrat, and that party, up until last week held the majority in the largest side of the legislative branch of government, the House of Representatives. Now she is part of the minority in the House as the mid-term elections put the Republicans in majority control, aided by and large by an ultra-conservative faction of Republicans known as the Tea Party.
The Tea Party is opposed to all aspects of the politcal plans of Barack Obama, which they believe is socialism. His health care bill was the bell-ringer that galvanized this movement and since Giffords voted for it, she and her district were marked as one that the republicans needed to capture in order to regain control of the House. Turns out they didn't need it, adn Giffords kept her job.
Now, somehow a few democrats, forgetting that a deranged, unbalanced whack-job with a murderous agenda did the actual trigger pulling, rallied around a few colloquialisms used during the campaign such as that "Giffords was in the cross-hairs", for example, or that Giffords was "targeted" for replacement to throw around accusations about the REAL blame for what happened.
2008 Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who may ruin against Obama in next year's presidential election, have been singled out because they either said or posted references of this nature. Never mind that everyone uses the phrases on a daily basis, it's as if Palin herself loaded the gun for Loghner and drove him to the gorcery store.
What flummoxes me is this couldn't be a more open-and-shut thing: Loughner has posted several anti-governmental rantings on social networking and most of those threatened political figures. Add an obsession with Jodie Foster or The Catcher In The Rye and you'd have the 2011 version of John Hinckley or Mark David Chapman. What people forget is that this is a CRIMINAL investigation, and not a politcal cross-burning for one party against the other.
It's nuts. Nobody has taken the time to step back and look at it for what it is. Indeed, the country is so concerned about whether or not Sarah Palin helped this psychotic jackass pick out the gun than the actual act he allegedly did. They also ignore the fact that the Tuscon Police have indicated publicly that Loughner acted alone in doing this, because one party is pissed off that the other one beat them out of office in the last election.
It disgusts me to see this happen in my country. Even the President, who I voted for but do not agree with on most issues, stated tonight in a memorial to the six victims of the shooting, called for people to NOT make this a politcal flashpoint and focus instead on good thoughts for the survivors and pray for the families who lost their loved ones. I hope people heed his request and let the police and FBI do their work.
Here's hoping that Gabrielle Giffords and the others who were wounded recover and that the families of those lost can find comfort in the coming days, weeks and years. Focus on healing before you toss blame around like a @#$!-ing football. Get over yourselves and focus on what's really important.
I think the right are the ones who are trying to make sister Sarah the vicitm, along with sister Sarah herself which she does on a regular basis. The fact is that the gunmen is responsible for what he did, in that I have no doubt. However the toxic political environment in this country has quite possibly been a contributing factor which is what I have heard from pundits on the left.
ReplyDeleteI happen to agree. I have posted and stated many times, there is no longer a debate in this country. There is "Im right and you're evil!" I seem to recall that the Tea Party movement did not begin until after Barak Obama was elected and at the time they were harping over the Stimulus bill. "The spending must Stop!", they shouted. Which to me was completely a BS argument because the big spending didnt seem to bother them when G W Bush was president and he spent as much as anyone TARP, 2 wars, prescription drug benefit, etc. So it really wasnt about spending with the Tea Party it was really basically about the fact that they dont like Barak Obama for whatever reason, and the political rhetoric has steadily rampped up from that point.
Never in my life would I have thought that a nominee from the party that I was part of for many years would publicly state on a radio program that if the government didnt change its ways that people could appropriately resort "second ammendment remedies" Now to me there is no other way to interpret that than to say that, "If you dont do what we want we will shoot you." That was Sharron Angle. How about Michelle Bachmann suggesting that she wants her followers to be "Armed and Dangerous? When did that become appropriate in our discourse.
I heard this morning about how the shooter was an avid gamer that played violent video games that could have influenced him, this was from a concservative local talk show host. Well I ask you this, if the whack job could have been influenced by violent video games why is it impossible that he was influenced by the hate that is spewed daily on radio and television?
The truth is no one knows for sure what set this idiot off and possibly never will. But the indisputable fact is this. If people who are are on the edge of sanity anyway hear enough crap to dehumanize folks that they disagree with politically then it sure makes pulling that trigger a whole lot easier.
Respecfully submitted.