A Sad Day for America

America’s political right wing has been raising the temperature of U.S. politics for months. In this poisoned atmosphere, one young man reached for his gun.

The line between what used to be called “extreme” and is today considered “normal” in political discourse had already shifted some time ago. Whoever witnessed the hysterical mobs of tea partiers protesting health care reform is already well acquainted with the abstruse notions that circulate within that group. Not just a few adherents of that right-wing populist movement live in a fantasy world where fact and fiction are insanely intermingled. Such soil is fertile not only for conspiracy theories; it’s also well suited for raising people who see themselves called upon to save their supposedly endangered liberty.

Arizona is a classic example of that. The Republican governor, Jan Brewer, was personally responsible for spreading the myth that Arizona was under attack from drug cartels and illegal aliens. She claimed people had been beheaded in the Arizona desert and that the state capital, Phoenix, was the newly crowned kidnapping capital of the world. Both claims were made up out of whole cloth and were meant only to ensure her reelection. It’s a fact that the tea party movement engages in militant speech. Its supposed leader, Sarah Palin, took literal aim at political opponents at the close of the 2010 midterm elections. Among them was Gabrielle Giffords, whose office was vandalized in March 2010 at the height of the health care reform debate. Her tea party opponent put out an invitation to begin firing.

When words are transformed into deeds, these politicians and their cheerleaders then send out sympathy cards as if they had nothing at all to do with the attacks on the victims; they did the same when an Arizona murderer took their rhetoric too seriously. But in the end, it makes no difference how twisted the perpetrator’s worldview might be. What’s decisive is the fact that he felt emboldened to literally blow a political opponent’s brains out.

The sad thing is, this isn’t just an isolated case; it’s a trend. After the attack at the Holocaust Museum and the assassination of an abortion provider, this is the third deadly escalation within a year. The perpetrators may have a confused view of reality, but that doesn’t shield them from being called domestic terrorists. It’s high time for verbal disarmament in the United States. Whoever pours gasoline on a fire in such an environment is also responsible for attacks like the one in Tucson. The assassin may have shot one representative, but he attacked the whole of democracy. It’s a sad day for America.