Religious Conservatives, Liberals and Some in the Middle
As Lena chats, she pays constant attention to the three players at the table — a smile here, a joke there. I am finally up $27 and decide it’s a good time to quit.
In Arizona, I leave Route 66 and head south toward Tucson. Brown, scrubby land. Towering cactus. Mexico isn’t far from here. It’s already 88 degrees and it’s still morning.
Last year, five people died in a supermarket parking lot in Tucson; Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head but survived purely by chance. Had the bullet struck one millimeter to the left or the right of where it did, she would have been dead. The shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, used a semiautomatic handgun, firing wildly in all directions. He is now undergoing psychiatric treatment. Giffords had to relinquish her seat in the House of Representatives and has been in a rehabilitation clinic since then.
Not far from the Tucson airport, between car dealerships and a truck rental, sits a flat-roofed reddish building in the brutal sunshine. It’s the office of the Pima County Sheriff, Clarence Dupnik.
Sheriff Dupnik Complains about “the Bullshit Spread by the Religious Cheerleaders”
Sheriff Dupnik went on camera just hours after the Giffords shooting. He’s a hefty guy with a fleshy nose and a mighty stomach. He says he’s “100% Polish.” The 76-year-old Dupnik has been working in Tucson law enforcement for 54 years. He’s not only a legend, he’s a personal friend of Gabrielle Giffords.
His words made headlines all around the globe. He asked how such an outbreak of violence could come about and answered his own question: The political climate in the nation is vitriolic, he says, poisoned. Poisoned by the ultraconservatives, religious fundamentalists and right wing radio talk shows that constantly agitate, that endlessly spread lies and propaganda.
Liberals love him for it. Europeans do as well. Finally, there’s a voice of American reason, a voice against the hate and ideological polarization.
He was mercilessly attacked by the right wing. “I got 10,000 emails,” he says. “People really believe the bullshit the religious cheerleaders put out. It’s like brainwashing.” At demonstrations, people carry placards depicting President Obama as Adolf Hitler with swastikas. “We’re bad examples for our kids,” the sheriff says.
Just a few years ago, the talk was all about the “Sun Belt” — New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California. Prospering states, eternal summer, the promise of a future different than that in the “Rust Belt,” the decaying industrial states of the north. People flocked to the Sun Belt and Arizona and Nevada became two of the fastest growing states in the nation. How could this place become so enraged, so frustrated, hysterical and radical?
What changed with the assassination attempt on Gabrielle Giffords, Sheriff?
Clarence Dupnik grins. Well, there’s now an Institute for Civility at the University of Arizona, under the sponsorship of ex-Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. And other than that? “Nothing.”
The nation is in uproar and the people are outraged. “The middle class works so that the rich can get even richer.”
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