Conservatives have spent the past 18 hours or so trying to deflect or change the topic to anything other than than the role of angry conservative rhetoric and its role in the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. They're probably wrong to argue that it can't be brought up... but probably right that, on balance, politics is really not the problem that led to Giffords and more than a dozen others being shot in a Safeway parking lot in Tucson.
The real lesson here, I suspect, is that many conservatives were caught short by the realization that Giffords was, and is, to many on the left, already a hero and a widely admired political survivor.
And I'm not just generalizing: I happen to love Tucson, and spent some time there, just last year. My mom gave money to Giffords via EMILY's List, and like many of the candidates, Giffords sent a mass Christmas card. Of all the ones we received from politicians, Giffords' card seemed the most natural and unforced.
There's no way, I think, for the politics of violence and the violent rhetoric of "lock and load" conservatism doesn't become a part of the discussion around the shotting. It decidedly doesn't help that Sarah Palin put up a "target map" of 20 Democratic Representatives she wanted to unseat, each distric marked in the cross-hairs of a gun sight. (and of the 20, 18 lost. Giffords was one of the two that targeting failed to remove).
But James Fallows of The Atlantic is probably right, and while the poltical climate is ripe for some examination... the story of mass shootings isn't defined by easy to explain political motives. And already, it's coming into focus that the alleged shooter in this case, as in so many others in recent years, is probably a story of untreated mental illness, and our societal failure in turning mental health into a law enforcement problem.
It's not Jared Lee Loughner's politics that will explain what led him to that parking lot with a Glock pistol, his mindset not defined by either his interest in Mein Kampf or the Communist Manifesto. Already, descriptions of "deeply disturbed" and "mentally unstable" have crept into explanations of his past actions, and the developing history of strange ramblings and inappropriate behavior in classroom settings is coming into focus.
The bigger problem now, as always, is that we have no way in this country to talk, reasonably or sensibly about mental illness, look rationally at the dilemmas we face in our failures to help people get diagnosed and treatedwhen issues of netal health are involved.There will be the perjorative attempts to label Louughner as "crazy" or "nuts", and there will be a loud pushback from those who fear stigmatizing all mental illnesses as prone to violence, dangerous, or needing to be locked up. People will try to find meaning in the rambling words, yet again, of someone who is quite possibly delusional, without providing any context. Our struggle to make sense of actions and decisions that are often inexplicable will go on.
Conservatives have done a terrible job, in recent years, of drawing lines and putting boundaries around practices and rhetoric, and those failings continue to haunt them when white supremacists rage, when militiamen wave their guns, Thinking about that last night, I realized that in some ways, this is about a little discussed divide in politics: consewrvatives tend to distrust the idea of groups and group thinking while enshrining the indvidual, however angry; while liberals believe much more in the power of organizing, and are leery of giving too much power or crdence ot one person. That dichotomy goes a long way to explaining conservative distrust of unions, organized workers, and protest groups... and the liberal concern for the separatists who hide in the woods with their guns (as well as their distrust of the kind of hero worship on the right for Ronald Reagan, or George W. Bush). What each side wants the other to do - expel outlying individuals, or discredit extremist groups - is often a direct challenge to a larger mindset.
These are the times when, for better and worse, we are watching the triumph of a David Brooks-like "sensible center," the people who stand for the proposition that the problem in our politics is that we've "gone too far" or "pushed the extremes." If we get a moment where the heated rhetoric gets dialed down, where some extremes of language get toned back... that's probably helpful for resetting, and reinvigorating the national political debate. It would, at least, suggest some sort of good coming out of a terrible tragedy. But conservatism didn't get Gabrielle Giffords and others sshot; Sarah Palin didn't put a gun into Jared Lee Loughner's hand. That's crazy talk... and it's the kind of thing we need less of, if we plan to have thoughtful discourse. But, if we did that, I suppose, then bringing up the topic of actual mental illness and how better to address mental health issues wouldn't seem so strange. Crazy... I know.
Comments