On Consequences: When What You Do Provokes Death And Crazy People

First and foremost, the fact that this is necessary sucks, but it is. There are crazy people in the world. Lots of them. There are lots of stupid, idiotic, morons out there, who misinterpret, misunderstand, and otherwise just don't get it.

This is about Congresswoman Giffords who, in case you aren't aware, was shot in the head yesterday, along with several others. The congresswoman is alive but a judge who was passing by to say hello is dead, and so is a little girl. There is no denying that the person who did it is imbalanced to say the least, but a small part of me has to believe that this wasn't a totally random act of violence.

Before the election, Sarah Palin famously marked various congressional seats up for election as targets. These were very literal targets, using crosshairs (wouldn't a circle or a square have sufficed?). Naturally Sarah Palin's camp denies that this has anything to do with the shooting, but what are they supposed to say? "Whoops, our bad!" I'm sorry but that's not going to fly, so all they can do is condemn the action, and duck the blame.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't Sarah Palin's fault. Or Republicans fault. There are far too many aspects of the crime to point to any single fault. But it didn't help any by putting a target on her head, and the heads of nineteen others. Remember when the graphic first came out? Remember how bricks were thrown through windows, bullets were shot into offices, and so on? One of those offices was congresswoman Giffords. And now a bullet is in her head (actually, it went straight through her brain).

So rather than be politically correct, why doesn't Sarah Palin and her aides admit that maybe they might have played a minor, inadvertent role in this? I know they didn't intend on anyone shooting anybody, but when you place crosshairs on people, someone is going to take the message the wrong way.

There is no denying that conservatives love guns. That's fine, they are entitled to them. But when conservatives bow to the bastion of gun lobbyists that is the NRA, and the conservative princess paints crosshairs on democratic "targets" can anyone blame someone for getting a mixed message? I'm not surprised this happened, which is what makes this whole scenario so frustrating. A lot of "liberals" saw this coming, or more accurately, were afraid of it occurring. This fear was unnecessary and could have been avoided.

By the way, if Sarah Palin's Take Back The 20 campaign "had nothing to do" with this, then why is it all of a sudden taken down? Sure, the election is over, but it was over two months ago, why now? Palin also argued that the symbols on the map aren't gun sights, but map crosshairs. But she tweeted this:

Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: 'Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!' Pls see my Facebook page.

and then later congratulated herself on 18 of the 20 on her bulls-eye list being defeated. What kind of message does this send? Reload? Bulls-eyes? Crosshairs? This may not be calling explicitly for violence, but at the very least does so implicitly.

But this isn't Palin's fault. Nor is it the fault of conservatives, republicans, gun owners, or gun rights advocates. This person is imbalanced, and he is to blame. But would he have done it otherwise? We can't be certain, but the rhetoric surrounding the mid term elections cannot have stayed this attack. Journalists are pointing out that he read Karl Marx, and Hitler, and that he wants a return to gold and silver currency. But I don't think that's relevant. Lots of people read Marx, I would read Marx if I read more often. And I remember picking up the biography of Hitler and being earnestly interested in reading it after reading the introduction. But I am the last person who would shoot anybody. And wanting a gold standard? Lots of people want that; Ron Paul for instance.

So if people want to peg his reading material on why he did this, then they should be fair and equate equal blame to the hateful political rhetoric of late. Hate, violence, aggression, these are all things that don't belong in politics. Politics is and should be all about diplomacy, but it's not. Political ads do nothing but attack, attack, attack their opponents. Rarely do these ads talk about the merits of a politician. Instead, we are left with a mentality of "who isn't worse than the other" rather than "who is the best."

The best example of this rhetoric that we need to avoid? Congresswoman Giffords's opponent last election, Jesse Kelly, held a campaign event to supplant her. Actually, the event was more specifically themed with removing her from office. This, from the Arizona Daily Star:

Kelly’s campaign event website has a stern-looking photo of the former Marine in military garb holding his weapon. It includes the headline: “Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.”
The event costs $50.

Yes, a photo of a marine, in uniform, holding his weapon, asking supporters to come fire an M16 for crying out loud, under the guise of removing her from office. Not only is this in extremely poor taste, but this does not strike me as behavior a Marine should exhibit. No one should, but a Marine especially. This is madness (cue 300 references "This. Is. Sparta!) This kind of garbage needs to stop. It shouldn't be tolerated, by anyone regardless of where they stand on issues. And I don't care how badly you disagree with someone, you don't take it into your own hands with a weapon, you do it at the ballot box.


Here's the original graphic, judge for yourself whether or not they are crosshairs or not. I certainly hope those crosshairs were worth a little girls life.