I used to wonder how the rising tide of hatred in Germany went unnoticed by its citizens, the ordinary people, but now I understand. It didn't. They embraced it in the name of "robust discourse". They felt empowered by it. Bigger than life. "Safer".
OTOH, if regular folks don't get that so many people tittering and winking about taking up arms doesn't effect crazies, I fear for us all the more. But our problem is not the crazy, isolated ones. Our problem is that supposedly sane public figures boast about using a "second amendment solution" and "gettin' 'er done". We all know what that means. Shoot to kill. As my NRA instructor friend once told me, you NEVER (emphasis hers) point a gun at anyone you don't intend to kill. Violence as "The Solution" is in the air just like it was in Germany. Don't think so? God help us.
How ironic that Representative Giffords was shot by a gun wielding madman. Welcome to the NRA's America. The NRA buys legislation that guarantees its members huge, ever increasing profits from gun sales. Conservative bastions like Arizona are model NRA communities. Everyone who wants one has a gun under their jacket or in their purse. Any crazy can walk in off the street and buy a gun as easily as buying a bottle of beer, hell . . . easier. A thirteen year-old kid can walk in alone, buy a gun, then walk out and shoot somebody with it, even an armed citizen carrying a concealed weapon for protection. It's the bullet you don't hear that gets you. Gun stores sell truck loads of guns to anyone with the cash, no questions asked. In Arizona it is even illegal to keep records of purchase. Perpetual war. It's the perfect loop. We're all being played.
US Representative Gabrielle Giffords warning
Sarah Palin "there will be consequences to cross-hairs map."
Sarah Palin "there will be consequences to cross-hairs map."
OTOH, if regular folks don't get that so many people tittering and winking about taking up arms doesn't effect crazies, I fear for us all the more. But our problem is not the crazy, isolated ones. Our problem is that supposedly sane public figures boast about using a "second amendment solution" and "gettin' 'er done". We all know what that means. Shoot to kill. As my NRA instructor friend once told me, you NEVER (emphasis hers) point a gun at anyone you don't intend to kill. Violence as "The Solution" is in the air just like it was in Germany. Don't think so? God help us.
How ironic that Representative Giffords was shot by a gun wielding madman. Welcome to the NRA's America. The NRA buys legislation that guarantees its members huge, ever increasing profits from gun sales. Conservative bastions like Arizona are model NRA communities. Everyone who wants one has a gun under their jacket or in their purse. Any crazy can walk in off the street and buy a gun as easily as buying a bottle of beer, hell . . . easier. A thirteen year-old kid can walk in alone, buy a gun, then walk out and shoot somebody with it, even an armed citizen carrying a concealed weapon for protection. It's the bullet you don't hear that gets you. Gun stores sell truck loads of guns to anyone with the cash, no questions asked. In Arizona it is even illegal to keep records of purchase. Perpetual war. It's the perfect loop. We're all being played.
8 comments:
Every time I pull up this page I see the post title and my brain reads "Robot discourse." But, if I can be serious for a moment, I really don't have any comment to add here, since I mostly agree.
Maybe that the people who balk at blaming and finger pointing (those people, mysteriously, being the ones who are being pointed AT,) should consider that it is precisely this kind of discourse that needs to replace the violent and aggressive military/cowboy shoot'm'up references that have gained favor with the media lately.
Most of us have agreed, when discoursing our opponents, to stop before we get to obscene personal references and out-and-out personal attacks of the sort found in chatrooms and Usenet groups everywhere, and I think we should include in this self-censoring effort references that are disingenuously and passive-aggressively suggesting physical violence up to and including the use of firearms--as if this is somehow a symbol of America and her freedom. (?) Perhaps it is.
And, finally, to those who balk at an attempt at civility, don't feel singled out by this current discourse of the left--many have said, and I add to that, "hey, I have said the same things, and often think them, but in light of this reminder of the power of language and of cultural tides, I choose to "tone it down."
I had never heard of this "Palin map" before the shooting in Arizona and it honestly disgusts me. I keep thinking about it and don't know what to say. I hate it when people in Canada use the phrase "so glad to be Canadian" (and therefore not American) because horrible things happen on our soil too. My thoughts mostly just go to the friends and families of the victims and so I squeeze my son, count my blessings and hope for many more days of being able to do so.
Good luck neighbours to the south. Sometimes things have to get worse to get better right?
"hey, I have said the same things, and often think them, but in light of this reminder of the power of language and of cultural tides, I choose to "tone it down."
Yeah. Me too. For the general good. The usenet flame wars were fun back in the day but mainly because they taught me not to take all that bullshit personally. It was one huge, no holds barred costume party free for all. But there is nothing more personal than threatening to kill somebody short of actually killing them and, like the kindergarten teachers say, that is just not O.K.! So enough. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't, or can't, call a spade a spade. In fact, we must.
"Robot discourse", eh? Well as long as they also mind their manners.
Good luck neighbours to the south. Sometimes things have to get worse to get better right?
Thanks, Kimberlee. We need it. My jaw also dropped when Palin posted her crosshairs target map. The woman is incredibly irresponsible. She's a pole dancer for the radical right.
PS. Give Baby Reid a big hug and kiss for me. I have got to stop calling these guys Baby. Baby Leo is still a baby. He just figured out how to control his pacifier but "Baby" Reid and Thea? Hardly.
"Baby" Thea currently insists on playing hide-n-seek with me when we're skyping and is already a Lady Gaga fan which could get interesting as she also loves watching videos of herself. Watch out Lady Gaga! I have a disturbing feeling that Thea Bella is gonna drink your soy latte.
I still don't see the right as better or worse than the left, when it comes to extreme and irresponsible rhetoric. I mean, when Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) said, “Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him,” about then candidate and now Governor Rick Scott (R-FL), no one cared. Why? Well, no one got shot. It's only after the fact we are shocked by the words, and really, we needn't be.
The edges have always been dangerously "robust". Palin's target allegory was fair enough within American political discourse, and since by now it clearly had nothing to do with the Tucson incident, I'm not sure what the lesson will turn out to be. Someone sometime soon will end up using something similar in their political marketing. It's not like those people are terribly creative.
I'm more concerned with what we are going to do about mental health. The hospitals were shut down because they were expensive and some people thought they edged towards civil rights violations. Let the patients' families care for them instead. Obviously this doesn't work. Loughner Senior failed his son utterly and now he knows it yet I do not know what he could have done. With a kid like that, how do you know just when to intervene, and how?
Major differences from Germany are not only that the country was suffering under the unfair terms of Versaille, but the Germans have always been paranoid about their neighbors, having only recently become unified and able to defend themselves. The national mood crystallized when the Nazis managed to focus the anger on the Jews, whom central Europeans have always been quick to blame anyway, and on the communists, who were wreaking havoc not far away. I really don't think comparisons of Nazi Germany to this country accomplish anything, from either direction.
To say hatred and evil are enabled by an embracing of robust discourse is really just to consider limiting speech, since voluntary limits can't last.
Palin's target allegory was fair enough within American political discourse
No, it wasn't.
I think what should scare us is how hard it was too see that right away. Little gunsight icons on a map? Jesus. An attempt at cuteness, given Palin's legendary far right wing pro-NRA politics?
I am starting to see how you may be right, there, Asha, about the blind spot. We know it happens, we should be cautious, perhaps, even if we all know this is not Nazi Germany, Don, even though you're the one who was all history repeats itself in predictable cycles and world war 3 is next year, or whenever it was.
"To say hatred and evil are enabled by an embracing of robust discourse is really just to consider limiting speech, since voluntary limits can't last."
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Of course there are limits to free speech. The simplest example is that it’s illegal to shout "FIRE" in a crowded theater.
Then there are such things as Felony Intimidation and Vicarious Liability.
Following her failed run for Congress, Cheryl Allen was recently arrested on eight counts of Felony Intimidation for implying violence on her Facebook page. "Someday Boooooom while you’re setting in your offices". "And you know I won't even be the one pulling the trigger".
And, although it would be the exception rather than the rule in criminal law, I think it is worth considering whether or not Sarah Palin, with her crosshairs map, is guilty of Vicarious Liability.
But, if you do not believe that charismatic public leaders can greatly influence standards of discourse and behavior, then perhaps you do not believe that your personal example makes a difference either. Me? I figure, even though I am always falling short, it is important what we say and do, not because we are individually important, but because I do believe we affect the people in our lives and there are only six degrees of separation between me and everyone else in the world.
As for comparing levels of fear in the US today to levels of fear in Germany pre-WWII, I believe there very definite similarities.
1) US post 911 paranoia, magnified by the recession, has destabilized the US much as the German paranoia you mention.
2) As in Germany, right-wing hatred has been focused, magnified and crystallized systematically. This time it is by FOX News and its army of fellow traveler hate mongers... Limbaugh, Coulter, Beck, O'Reilly, Palin and her crosshairs map etc. and formalized by the Tea Party. Their scapegoats are Muslims and Liberals. Don't believe me? Ask a few.
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