Yesterday, January 8, 2011, a United States Congresswoman from Arizona was shot in the head while meeting with her constituents. At this moment, she is still fighting for her life, but several other people were killed. Bystanders caught the 22-year old gunman, who, as information continues to come in, is apparently quite crazy.
Representative Gabrielle Giffords was doing her job, having just been sworn in to the most recent session of Congress. I've no doubt that there were people who didn't vote for her, who don't agree with her positions, and who would rather someone else had taken the oath of office last week. Rep. Giffords supported health care reform, for example, a position with which many Americans, although likely not the "vast majority" claimed by the law's opponents, don't agree. In fact, nobody agrees one hundred percent with any elected official -- any more than we always agree with our colleagues at work or our spouses. And when the stakes are high, and the subject is important, disagreements can get heated and stressful.
But we don't pick up guns and try to assassinate each other over our differences of opinion. As car advertisers often say, our mileages may vary.
So now everyone is rising up in righteous indignation, and issuing statements, sending their "thoughts and prayers" to the Congresswoman and her family, to the families of the victims, to the other injured. Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle have been falling all over themselves on TV, radio, and Twitter to distance themselves from this act of violence, rushing to the nearest live microphone to disavow any connection, actual or philosophical, with this crime.
It's all theatre.
These same members, Democrat and Republican alike, were the very ones treating this new legislative session as if it were a land war. Before they were even sworn in, they had already drawn sides, circulated strategy maps, and made plans to annihilate the policies of the other side. They long ago put aside any pretense of actually governing, and let their battle flags fly.
And now they have the nerve to act surprised that some unhinged person, who takes them at their word, fires actual real bullets at the person he sees -- as demented as he apparently is -- as the enemy. Not Representative, not legislator, but enemy, someone to be violently removed and cleared out of the way.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, you did this. You set this tragedy in motion months and months ago.
Every political debate causes your needle to fly to ten, into the red. You don't just disagree with a statement from the other side; you vilify them for having a different point of view, as if an opposite opinion is a personal attack on all that is good and sacred and right and patriotic. And the response from the other side is just as extreme. You can't wait to get in front of the cameras, as long as they lead to your favorite sympathetic news outlet, to blast the other side's ideas, whatever they may turn out to be. You don't listen, and you don't care. Frankly, you don't even govern. You just shout and blame and point fingers and try to make the other side look like the enemy.
And we know what to do with the enemy, don't we?
I can't speak for Rep. Giffords or her family, or any of the other victims of this tragedy. I can only speak for myself, a disgusted voter in this democracy.
Shut up. Keep your thoughts to yourself. They are poison. Keep your prayers, too. Because if you were in touch with anybody worth praying to, you would neither engage in nor tolerate the invective that has dominated the airwaves up until yesterday.
Next week this time, political focus will have turned to the battle over repealing the health care reform act. Rep. Giffords will be an afterthought. And Capitol Hill will ring again with charged rhetoric and war imagery as each side tries to crush the enemy like Sherman marching to the sea.
Someone needs to remind our legislators that there really is no such thing as "civil" war.
No comments:
Post a Comment