The Tucson Tragedy

It’s been several weeks since the shootings in Tucson so I think we can try to calmly examine some of the things surrounding this event.

No one, in my opinion, can make sense of this event except to say that only some mentally unbalanced person could have caused this violence. At the same time I think it is appropriate to ask how close is any one of us to committing something like this? How much pushing via harsh rhetoric and a toxic political tone would be needed to get some other Jared Loughner to do something similar? How many of those gun loving and government hating right wingers are just close enough to that edge to gun down some other politician? Probably more than we care to think of.

At the same time the speech by Obama on Wednesday after the shooting in Tucson was spot on in it’s tone and words. I was blown away by, first of all, the reception Obama got from the audience and the continued applause through out the speech. I was expecting something very somber and muted but instead we got a rally of sorts to come together and honor those that died and celebrate their lives and the people that took part in helping others. My sense was that this audience had enough of the talk of the right and the Tea Party, at least for the moment.

Soon after the shooting there was a lot of talk in the media of the connection between the rhetoric of the past two years and the shootings. For once I had to agree with Glenn Beck and others in saying that the shooting was the sole doing of a “nut job.” The linkage between the “don’t retreat, reload” talk leading up to last falls election and the shooting really had no basis in fact, at least in this instance.

But at the same time is it OK to continue to speak in terms of “don’t retreat, reload” and expect that no one in America would be embolden to take matters into their own hands? Talk like that has a cumulative effect and it’s only a matter of time when someone feels justified to do what Jared Loughner did.

So maybe there wasn’t any real connection between the shootings and the toxic talk of the past two years. But our world is different that any other time. There are lots more of us and we have virtually instant communications. The internet has opened up a whole new world of information, good and bad, that can possibly help push someone to the edge of violence. Dialing back the tone of things wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Maybe taking time to think about how we talk to each other deserves some pause for thought. Think about it.