Conservative
political rhetoric,
focused most intensely on President Barack Obama and
manifesting itself as racial slurs and threats of violence, are
apparently involved in the massacre of six individuals at an
Arizona political rally. An apparently deranged individual,
likely motivated by inflammatory political rhetoric such as
Arizona senate candidate Sharon Angle’s call to “Second
Amendment remedies” should conservatives lose (as she did this
past November), opened fire as a congresswoman met with
constituents outside a grocery store. The gunman killed
Arizona's chief federal judge and five others, and left the
lawmaker fighting for her life. The shooting targeted Democratic
Representative Gabrielle Giffords, authorities said, and left
the three-term congresswoman in critical condition after a
bullet passed through her head. A shaken President Barack Obama
called the attack “a tragedy for our entire country.” Giffords,
40, a moderate Democrat, narrowly won re-election in November
against a tea party candidate who opposed her support of the
health care law. Anger over her position became violent at
times, with her Tucson office vandalized a few hours after the
House passed the overhaul last March. More recently, at a
Giffords event someone dropped a weapon out of their pants.
MSNBC
It is worth noting the violent rhetoric and intolerant hate
speech comes almost exclusively from the extreme right fringe, a
group the Republicans courted and encourages out of their bee
hives during this, the nastiest political season I’ve ever seen.
Wall-to-wall attack ads, with Fox News profiteering off of
stoking the flames of racism and hate masquerading as political
debate. These wing-nuts wining political contests n overwhelming
numbers was apparently not enough for this lunatic, whom no one
has apparently informed the election is over. We should all be
deeply disturbed by this tragedy even as we lift up the Giffords
and other grieving families in prayer.
Arizona, home of the “Papers Please” anti-immigrant law and who
initially refused to honor the national holiday celebrating Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., is becoming known as the Land of
Intolerance. The state’s governor, Jan Brewer, appears, at least
at a glance, to be completely unhinged. That she won reelection
utterly baffles me as this woman demonstrates classic symptoms
of paranoid schizophrenic megalomania. Now, I could be wrong,
she could be a very stable and thoughtful persons, but in every
run of video footage I have ever seen, this person comes across
clearly and irrefutably as a nut case. The dilated pupils, the
fractured speech, the inappropriate snickering and Nixonian
gait: this woman is nuts. Two people have already died in
Arizona and another 96 are waiting for a life-saving transplant
they may no longer be able to afford after the state slashed
money reserved for the procedures. One lawmaker said Arizona is
now home to "death panels." And those whose names were on the
list, those who will surely die without a transplant, found
themselves in a state of disbelief. [CNN]. This despite the fact
transplant procedures account for less than one-tenth of one
percent of Arizona’s state budget. Brewer pastes on a creepy,
disingenuous smile as she babbles like a third-grader, likely
fussing through a Valium haze, defending her staunch opposition
to show mercy to Arizona’s most vulnerable residents.
Christopher J. Priest
9 January 2011
editor@praisenet.org
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