Keeping the right focus after killings
If anything good can come of tragedy, one of the best reactions to the Arizona killings would be, as we urged in this space barely more than a week ago, an overall reduction in the rancor of public discourse. One of the worst would be an obsession with the rancor in public discourse.
The misguided rage that exploded in a Tucson, Ariz., Safeway on Saturday unquestionably was flavored by politics. But we all must acknowledge that even if it could be shown that the Arizona shooter was an obsessive consumer of political rantings — which so far it cannot — millions of people listen to, surf, watch and read political diatribes every day but don’t rush out to shoot politicians and anyone who may be near them.
A political agenda does appear to have figured somewhere in the confused stew of emotions and ideas that drove the shooter, but that observation isn’t far from noting that a fixation on Jodi Foster figured somewhere into the mixed-up thinking that led John Hinckley Jr. to fire on President Ronald Reagan. The issues affecting these men’s actions are deeper and more inscrutable than cursory review can plumb.
Therefore, fixating on the degree to which political vitriol influenced the Arizona killer can only distract from the real problem at hand. Almost as quickly as some commentators lash out at Sarah Palin’s targeting imagery or other anecdotal examples of conservative language that may have fueled the shooter, their opponents can and will trot out historical references of demeaning, tasteless imagery by Democrats that one day could have consequences just as devastating.
None of this gets us very far. And worse, it distracts us from larger, more relevant responses such as, how do we remain a free society and yet avoid giving individuals like this the tools and opportunities to lay tragedy at the feet of the nation? Or, what are we doing, especially in a time of great economic distress, to identify, monitor and help individuals whose behaviors, like those of this shooter, are widely and thoroughly recognized as dangerous?
It is altogether fitting and natural to react with outrage at a crime so abhorrent to the ideals of a spirited democracy. But blaming it on the words of your political adversaries does nothing more than incite them and open the debate to an equally pointless attack whenever some excessive zealot commits an unspeakable act in your name. Instead, we are better served to focus on the peculiar circumstances of the zealot’s act and to study actions that can address those.
We must mourn the lives lost in this rampage, and we must continue to pray for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the others wounded. And then — in our neighborhoods, our churches, our schools, our legislature and our congressional districts — we need to talk, with respect and open minds, about gun control, security, mental health and the other issues directly linked to the tragedy.