Gunfire in the Land of Political Hatemongers

U.S. politics have become increasingly radicalized — and the tragic climax is the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Giffords. And all this is happening while agitators such as Sarah Palin are now switching to conciliatory tones. But how long will the sudden truce in rhetoric last?

The shots have brought almost deafening silence. In an unusually subdued statement, Sarah Palin said, “My sincere condolences are offered to the family of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords,” and the usually pugnacious Republican noted that she and her family will “pray for […] peace and justice.”

Republican leader Michael Steel seemed “shocked and shaken”* about the bloodbath in Tucson, Arizona. There, last Saturday morning, Jared Lee Loughlin killed six people, including a little girl who was there to speak to Giffords, a Democrat. Numerous others were injured, and Giffords suffered a gunshot to the head. Her condition is critical but stable.

The politician is now in an induced coma, Dr. Michael Lemole and Dr. Peter Rhee said at the trauma center at University Hospital in Tucson on Sunday.

“This makes us sick,”* said Trent Humphries, a member of the tea party, whose members often criticized Giffords. This statement leaves a stale aftertaste because of the violence directed against the 40-year-old, even though, of course, there is not yet one clear instigator of this tragedy. There are many, however, who attribute this event to the overall heated atmosphere of political debate.

Palin had previously displayed a U.S. map on Palin’s Political Action Committee web page. The map was complete with crosshairs aimed at the Democratic electoral districts, with the crosshairs actually marking elected officials who had favored health care reform, thus making them people Palin deemed necessary for Republicans to defeat in the midterm elections last November.

Palin’s Facebook page indicated this motto: “Do not retreat, reload!!” And this motto was even indicated despite the fact that a year ago Giffords had already been at an event where there turned out to be a gun.

Republican Michael Steele, who now so eloquently is expressing dismay, had previously demanded that Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in Congress, should be sent to the “firing line.” He meant that Pelosi should be fired. But those words now seem inappropriate.

An Undertone of Violence Is Nothing New in U.S. Politics

Tea party members long ago put Giffords in their crosshairs, not only because of her support of Barack Obama’s health care reform, but also because she, as a Democrat, was not in favor of figuratively bashing illegal immigrants in Arizona, a border state.

After the shooting, when a reporter asked the congresswoman’s father if Giffords had enemies, her father said simply: “Yeah, the whole tea party.”

Tucson Sheriff Clarence Dupnick said of the political climate in Arizona: “We have become the mecca of prejudice and bigotry.” But that could actually be said of the state of politics across the entire U.S.

Sure, an undertone of violence in rhetoric is nothing new. Conflicts from slavery to segregation to Vietnam to abortion rights have been outright bloody. In 1995 the right-wing extremist Timothy McVeigh blew up a government building in Oklahoma, killing 168 people.

Media Feed the Debate

But in 1995, the nation united again. Democrat Bill Clinton helped after the Oklahoma bombing in whatever way he could. Then he argued that radical Republicans in Congress had spurred the debate.

But is that all happening again? The most vocal of the left and right have become so obnoxious that nuances can hardly be heard anymore. Some of the representatives of both political camps no longer talk to each other — they shout.

Even in the ranks, that tone has become relentless. Even when Giffords, who was one of the few Democrats in conservative Arizona, simply didn’t vote last week for Pelosi to be minority leader in the House, a reader complained to a liberal blog, Daily Kos, that: “Giffords is dead to [him] now.”

American media fuels this kind of debate. The most obnoxious talk show guests get invited back. And on the Internet, hate spreads quickly, finding its way into millions of e-mails and posts. After the attack in Oklahoma, it took days before the question of guilt really got going. There wasn’t widespread use of the Internet for the most part, except among computer geeks at that time.

This time, the online discussions began after just a few minutes. On the website “Politico.com,” which uses the breathless tone of media in Washington D.C., and which takes on almost any topic as if it were part of a political war game, this statement quickly appeared: “Who in American politics deserves a slice of blame for the Tucson murders?”

Reloading For Sure

For some Democrats, it was equally clear that the assassin “seems clearly to be against the government,”* as well as the tea party. “Mission Accomplished,” a liberal blogger posted on Palin’s PAC website, with a mocking reference to Palin’s crosshair targeting Giffords.

Some Democratic campaign strategists sense the realization that Palin could very possibly be removed as a potential presidential candidate now, and that this may also be an opportunity for President Obama to become the voice of reason in opposing radical Republicans, as Bill Clinton once was.

But the right is fighting back. Sure, you have to grieve now for a moment, said Judson Phillips, an official with the national tea party. But he gets combative at the very same time, saying, “We cannot allow the hard left to do what it tried to do in 1995 after the Oklahoma City bombing. Within the entire political spectrum, there are extremists, both on the left and the right. Violence of this nature should be decried by everyone and not used for political gain.”

Last Wednesday, Giffords wanted colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives to discuss a request to overturn Obama’s health care reform. The Republicans had a debate scheduled, and there were expectations for a lot of militant rhetoric.

After the Arizona shooting, the debate was canceled — and replaced by a moment of silence.

*Editor’s Note: Quotations could not be verified.