Fully Automatic

Gabrielle Giffords remains in critical condition after surgery. She was able to "respond to simple commands" when conscious, but doctors are not speculating on the ultimate outcome of this shooting. The FBI is in charge of the investigation of her shooting because she is a federal official, and its agents have found evidence of a planned assassination by the alleged shooter, 22 year old Jared Lee Loughner. The second "person of interest" turned out to be a cab driver not implicated in the shooting.

There is speculation that Loughner had ties to an anti-immigration group. If so, it is further evidence of that issue as a flashpoint in Arizona. On the same day Giffords was shot, the NY Times reported that the state of Arizona used a new state law to shut down a Latino literature class in a Tucson high school. According to the Times, "Mr. Acosta’s class and others in the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican-American program have been declared illegal by the State of Arizona — even while similar programs for black, Asian and American Indian students have been left untouched." The federal judge who was shot and killed as he greeted Gabrielle Giffords, John M. Roll, was slated to rule on the legality of this law.

Gabrielle Giffords won reelection this fall by a slim margin over a Tea Party Republican candidate Jesse Kelly. It came to light today that during the campaign Kelly held a campaign event at which supporters could shoot an assault rifle with him. The event was promoted with these words: Get on Target for Victory in November Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.

This is the kind of rhetoric that has become acceptable in American politics. Whether you consider this dog whistle (or unconscious) promotion of violence, or a thoughtless and moronic exploitation of undifferentiated anger, or a cynical and dangerous attention-getting device, it never should have been given the tacit approval of mainstream politicians and media. While I thoroughly agree with Meteor Blades that there is no left-right equivalency on fomenting violence--a now standard tactic of the Rabid Right--using extreme rhetoric to gain attention or to inflate dissatisfaction with violent language has become far too ordinary. As an Arizona poster on Daily Kos has learned, when she or he wrote a diary criticizing Giffords' vote for someone other than Nancy Pelosi as House minority leader by saying that Giffords "is now dead to me" in its title. Extreme rhetoric has become even more standard on the Internet than in politics.

I do however differentiate satirical caricature, such as referring to the GOPers as death eaters, and the new Speaker of the House as Voldemort. But maybe I'm wrong on that. In any case, violent rhetoric from the Republican Right has become fully automatic, and fully accepted, at least until now. That, linked with the Republican Right's gun fetish, and the Democrats' politically calculated cowardice on at least keeping guns off the public streets--something that's been a universally accepted standard of civilization for at least a century--has created a dangerous brew. Among the five people killed in Tucson was a nine year old girl, who was born on September 11, 2001. Also killed was a 79 year old woman retiree, a Republican. The violence starts with unhinged perpetrators, but it doesn't necessarily stop there.