The assassination attempt in Tucson Saturday sadly conveys how anger and violence in American politics can plunge into a bloodbath with the squeeze of a trigger.
The blinding light of hate is clenching too many fists out there.
There is thunder on the right, lightning on the left. A kaleidoscope of emotions and convictions too hot to handle.
Just read the malice that soaks many of these threads with fire and brimstone. If someone ever lit a match to many of the comments on this blog, it would ignite an inferno.
We all should be as still as the sun today, reflecting on what has become of us.
U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords remained in critical condition this morning after a gunman shot her in the head Saturday and then opened fire on a crowd gathered at a political meet-and-greet outside a supermarket.
The shooting killed six people, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl, and wounded 14 others.
The 9-year-old girl was Christina Taylor Green, the granddaughter of former Phillies manager Dallas Green. Sometimes the irony is thick enough to cut with a steak knife. Christina was born on 9/11/01.
Local authorities took custody of 22-year-old suspect Jared Lee Loughner at the scene. The Pima County Sheriff’s Department said the suspect had been transferred to FBI custody.
Early Sunday morning, investigators released a surveillance photo of a man between 40 and 50 years old who is “possibly associated with the suspect.”
Nothing is more dangerous than nuts with powder kegs where normal folks have souls.
While the exact motivations of the suspect in the shootings remained unclear, an Internet site tied to Loughner contained antigovernment ramblings.
And regardless of what led to the episode, it quickly focused attention on the degree to which inflammatory language, threats and implicit instigations to violence have become a steady undercurrent in the nation’s political culture.
There is hope that Giffords will recover from the bullet that went straight through her brain. She woke briefly yesterday and recognized her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly.
The head of trauma at the University of Arizona medical center, where Giffords underwent surgery, said he’s “very optimistic” about her chances. She is responding to commands from doctors.
But her chances depend on where exactly she was shot and on how fast the bullet was traveling.
According to Robert Granacher, Jr., a neuropsychiatrist at St. Joseph Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, “There’s a distinct possibility that she will not be able to function as a congresswoman,” and her doctors won’t know for sure until six to 18 months after surgery.
Giffords, 40, is a moderate Democrat who narrowly won re-election in November against a tea party candidate who sought to throw her from office over her support of the health care law.
Anger over her position became violent at times, with her Tucson office vandalized after the House passed the overhaul last March and someone showing up at a recent gathering with a weapon.
Classmates describe Loughner as often doing his own thing and occasionally disrupting class with nonsensical outbursts. One classmate said he applied himself in his high school band but caused trouble in his other classes, going on to say, “There are some guys who are just angry. I never really saw a smile on his face at all.”
Though a man who appears to be Loughner said in a December 15 YouTube video that he was a U.S. military recruit, the army says he wasn’t accepted. In other online videos he talks about “English grammar” and mind control. The Pima County sheriff said Loughner is mentally unstable.
Little wonder that the loners with agendas out there scrawl such wayward signatures for their parchment always is loose topsoil. And their fear is like a large cardboard box inside their heads, empty but bulky, leaving room for little else.
And leaving Gabrielle Giffords with a bullet hole in her head, not to mention the dead and other wounded.
We need to temper the tone of American politics. There is nothing civil about a civil war.
Zeke Blog 