there’s a lot we don’t know about what happened to cause the assassination attempt in arizona.

but here’s what i know, what we *all* know already. you cannot create a climate of intolerance, hatred and rage, without someone getting hurt. you cannot shout “fire” in a theatre – because there are unintended, but not unforeseeable repercussions. and you cannot have an environment where almost everyone gets a gun, without almost everyone getting a gun.

this is what the continued feedback loop of amplification and escalation of violent and inflammatory political rhetoric has come to, this is what all the Glenn Becks, Sarah Palins, and radical Tea Party hyperbole has become the catalyst for: an assassination attempt.

this is the same congresswoman who had her offices vandalised, who’d received death threaths, and who was at the centre of one of the most highly politically charged elections this year, in the most highly politicially charged state in the country. she had an image of crosshairs put on her by no less than Sarah Palin. and she was shot point blank in the head by someone who appears to have mental health issues, but also a serious political motivation. this is not coincidental.

this was an assassination attempt, pure and simple, and assassination attempts are political, even when carried out by people who are mentally ill.

as pretty much every rational person acknowledges, the Palis and Becks of the world never really meant for someone to be killed.

but there are multitudes of people out there who are *not rational*. there are multitudes of people out there who with hairtrigger emotions and bulging temples shrieking at the top of their lungs about HITLER and REVOLUTION. the vitriol and hatred and rage has been escalating UNABATED for the past two years, and has been cheered and egged on by people like Beck and Palin who wrap themselves in flags and ammunition and foam at the mouth about “socialism” and “fascism”.

every time i see American news it makes my FUCKING GUT ROIL and my bloodpressure skyrocket. and i am a rational person.

you cannot drop a lighted match into a tinderbox, and then be surprised when it explodes. and maybe it wasn’t anything palin specifically said, or beck said which fomented this man’s hatred of government – but for the past two years they and other politicians) have been intentionally and deliberately whipping people into a frenzied hysteria for their own profit and purpose. you cannot engage in such acts, and then claim innocence when it all gets out of hand. when someone puts a microphone in your hand or a camera in front of your face and you begin to *claim to speak for others*, then you have a responsibility for your words and actions which you cannot conveniently discharge.

you cannot use language about “reloading”, and “second amendment remedies” and putting images of crosshairs on people and then feign horror when someone unbalanced connects the fucking dots into an image of a gun.

george wallace didn’t explicitly call for the assassination of martin luther king jr, but one cannot in all good reason, pretend that his wildly inflammatory rhetoric didn’t influence james earl ray.

this is what happens when violent words and images impact on violent people. this is what happens when violent people have ready access to guns. the end result is murder.

there are six people dead today, including a judge and a child. there is a congresswoman with a hole through her head fighting for her life.

this country, my country, has been ratcheting up the noise and agita to an unsustainable level – all rational thought and speech has been drowned out. it’s become a caricature of itself, representative of every horrible stereotype about America that I fight so hard to dispel over here, and which, every time i return, slaps me across the face as feeling completely alien to the country that (in spite of all its flaws) i love. these embers of discontent have been fanned by the becks and palins and tea partiers. the fire is officially out of control, and it threatens to engulf all that is good and sane and reasonable. if it wasn’t this guy, it would have been someone else – of this i am certain.

the only question that remains is whether the becks, the palins, the tea partiers, use this as an excuse for more incendiary argument and publicity, or as a wakeup call.

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