Almost as soon as the news broke Saturday about the Arizona shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and of 19 others — six fatally — at the “Congress on the Corner” gathering for constituents, the right wing of this country launched an avalanche of denial about the connection of their infamously harsh political propaganda — and their collateral promotion of excessively loose gun laws — to the shooting. Blame the unbalanced, deranged shooter, they cried, but don’t attempt to connect his heinous crime with the instigators of the political hate he spouted in writings.
This telling reaction, since embraced by mainstream cable talking heads across the political spectrum, was coyly framed at the outset by, among others, Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tennessee’s senior senator, in his initial statement about the shooting.
“We have to be very careful about imputing the motives or the actions of a deranged individual to any particular group of Americans who have their own political beliefs,” he said. “We ought to cool it, tone it down, treat each other with great respect, respect each other’s ideas and even on difficult issues like immigration or taxes or health care law, do our best not to inflame passions.”
Well, yes. That’s all true, in its two parts. But it is more than a little late. The second of the two sentences has been much ignored by the far right for so long that it’s become a dysfunctional defense against the necessity of imputing the terrible Arizona shooting to its political roots.
The right wing in this instance — like all political purveyors of hate and violence whatever their party or ideology — ought to be, must be, called out for its contribution to the atmosphere that spawned this shooting. Free speech or not, words have consequences. Words provide oxygen to irrational hate and bring it to life.