With the recent shooting in Arizona I have really mixed feelings about everything political. Let's give our prayers to the survivors of the people who got killed and the people injured during this tragic senseless event. I was hoping that maybe this might be a wake up call against the climate of our political events of late. As of today though I realize this is never going to happen. I think our news media, political, and justice systems are really broken in this country. During the last couple of elections the tone of things has just gotten out of hand.
I believe in the 1st amendment and free speech, but there are limits. It has always been against the law to say certain things, for an instance, you can't stand up and yell fire in a crowded theater. I thought there were laws against slander where you can't publicly say untrue things about people, but in our political arena this seems to be common practice. I also thought you couldn't make threats against other people, and I even thought that you couldn't incite a riot or incite violence, but perhaps I'm wrong because you can see this go one everyday, specially in political settings.
Now before anyone starts getting bent out of shape, I don't think that the shooting actually had anything to do with Palin's gun slogan remarks, I'm not going to point the finger at Palin or her other Republican buddies and say that it was their fault this troubled person went postal, but I do think that the other issues the Arizona Congresswoman has had with people smashing her office door and making threats does have to do with the Republican Tea Party getting everyone riled up into a frenzy with prophesies of doom and hate speech. Pretty much all everyone was hoping to get out of Republicans after this horrific event were statements denouncing the strong language used during campaigning and against violence of this kind directed towards innocent people and politicians. This was not a demand for an admission of guilt, it was just a statement that was hoped to come to try to help deescalate some of the hot emotions that have been inflamed more and more the last few of election cycles. Instead we first got some double talk about how posters and things said were misconstrued, then came the cry of we can say anything we want as it is protected by the 1st amendment. I'm sorry, but these weren't just harmless metaphors, these were cries to come to arms and take back their country from people who don't have the same opinions that they do. What's even more disappointing/saddening/stupid is it wasn't that long ago, that these were the same people that were calling for the assassination of the founder of Wikileaks for exposing some mostly embarrassing, but some possibly criminal things that have been going on in our government and other governments around the world. These people have been bending over backwards trying to figure out how to strip any 1st amendment rights from Wikileaks to stop information that should be coming out of our major news organizations if they weren't all on the dole with these people in power, or it would maybe be more correct to say if they didn't have the people in power on their doles.
It's too bad that the tragedy of what's happened, the lives lost and lives damaged are getting lost in the back and forth finger pointing and arguing about who's to blaim.
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