Now the story repeats itself in Tucson.  Where is the acceptance of responsibility?  Real idea leaders have the character to stand up and admit if there words brought death.  Either to justify it in the cause of a greater good as those who fought the war against fascism or to denounce it as an error in speech, a flaw in their idea that they did not expect or intend to end like this.  Thus far silence broken only by rationalizations that ignore the elephant in the room.  It is difficult to know if people like Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and the rest even believe the non sense that comes out of their mouths.  I suspect it has more to do with ratings and getting their fifteen minutes of fame, of boosting their egos and of raking in the speaking fees than it does with a sense of civic duty or trying to build a better stronger society or hell just reporting the news but that is from a bygone era when news was information not info-tainment.  The cost though is the life of a child among others.  Six people dead, others struggling to recover.  What makes you so important that we must pay like this?

But it is not just the Right Wing that has perpetrated and escalated this sewer of hate on the airwaves and the printed page.  All of the media needs to bear its share of the blame.  Instead of shouldering that responsibility and reflecting on where everything went wrong the media has gone out of its way to focus the blame away from them to the lone gunman.  He was deranged.  He had a history of social and psychological problems.  Geraldo Rivera who has made a bad joke into a career conflates everything from Puerto Rican independence to the plight of the Palestinians together as some sort of background report.  Of course he failed to mention the American Revolution and the acts of terrorism committed against innocent civilians by the Sons of Liberty, men revered as heroes by the very journalists that incite this new psychotic patriotism.  Not everyone who commits an act of political violence is deranged and while some of his examples fit others certainly did not.

In this case the young man does have a history of problems.  There are only two possible groups that will be influenced by the ravings of the lunatic pseudo conservatives:  one is those who believe they can benefit from the chaos, fear and the blind obedience to those who seem to offer control and order; the other group is the weak, the frightened, the disenfranchised, the terminally gullible lost in a world that has left them behind.  An education system has abandoned them leaving them with few skills to discern truth from deception. It has left them hostage to the swirling winds of political manipulation.  Sadly, this is by far the larger of the two.  Our gunman falls within this second group.  Told that the president of the United States and his supporters are actually attempting to destroy his country and told in the same breadth that that country is the best one that has ever been created (both incorrect), what was his simple mind supposed to to?  And what will the next simple mind do?  This is not over.  If nothing changes, if the same morons of media spew their idiocy unfettered, there will be more carnage, more funerals.

We cannot prevent it if we continue to delude ourselves and not take responsibility; responsibility ourselves for allowing this diatribe to continue, responsibility for watching and laughing when we know that others are being duped.  Making the actual announcers who use this hate speech to further their careers responsible will be much harder as they show no moral character themselves.  Appealing to their better natures is an appeal to a void.  But, a start might be to hold them legal accountable when they do step over the line.  When Glenn Beck in the Moyers piece ruminates on whether he would need to hire someone else to kill Michael Moore or if he could do it himself, the law should take him at his word.  It is a  crime under Canadian law to utter a death threat and I believe it to also be a crime in most U. S. states.  I interpret those remarks as a clear threat against Michael Moore’s life and should not be taken as a joke just because Beck is a radio and television personality.  It’s not much of a beginning but if we don’t start somewhere things will only get worse.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes is credited with the axiom that freedom of speech does not include yelling fire in a crowded theatre.  While this is somewhat out of context of the actual ruling that Holmes was making at the time, the concept serves me well here.  If I am in a crowded auditorium or arena of some sort and I falsely begin to yell fire, it is reasonable to assume that someone may panic.  One would suspect that it was my intent to create panic as no other logical motive exists.  Panic, psychologists affirm, is very contagious.  If the building is crowded and everyone rushes toward the exits at once injuries and even death are likely if not certain.  The premise here is simple.  I have misinformed those around me who have no time or ability to judge the veracity of my assertion.  In the absence of an alternative voice shouting that there is no fire and assuming no sane person would falsely call the alarm, everyone in the building would assume that there was indeed a fire.  It is therefore prudent for them to attempt to exit the building as quickly as possible given that a clear and present threat to their lives appears to exist.  The bottleneck created by a large number of individuals acting without guidance crushing the exits insures a tragic outcome.  Because my speech led to a tragedy that I should have easily foreseen, barring any mental abnormality, I am responsible for that tragedy and should shoulder the consequences.  If someone dies, I should be charged and found guilty of at least intentional manslaughter if not a higher count as my actions were not only reckless but frivolous.

People like Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and others of their ilk have been yelling fire at the top of their lungs.  They are not presenting alternative opinions and reasoned criticism but rather sensationalism in a hunt for ratings and top spot on the neo-con rubber chicken circuit.  The American people caught up in the fear mongering presented as journalism by these self-important gurus of Right-wing thought are reeling under a deluge of misinformation.  Hearing screams across the airwaves that Obama is going to murder their grandmothers and turn their children into socialist robots, fear takes over and few people make good decisions when they are afraid.  For the record, one more time, I have read Obama’s policies and watched his performance over the last several months and I can affirm categorically that he is not a socialist nor are any of his policies socialist.  On health care he is simply proposing what amounts to an extension of the existing medicaid program to provide for a voluntary opt in.  It will not solve the current problems in health care and will be more expensive than it should be because the major health insurance companies will still control the bulk of the market.  As for his speech to school children, asking young Americans to write an essay on how they might help their president and their country hardly seems indoctrination unless you follow the philosophies of Ayn Rand and believe that you should never do anything to help your community or your country.  How is it indoctrination if the children themselves will be giving their thoughts to the president on how to make a better America.  That sounds more like patriotism than indoctrination.  After all what is a country if it is not its people working towards common goals?  I thought that was the big complaint of the Republicans and Right Wing activists that the Democrats were not listening to the voice of the people.

Facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, mired in two foreign wars that they cannot understand and see no end to, the people of America are confused and frightened.  America no longer looks like the giant it did only a few years ago.  Americans now doubt the certainty of their childhood, that America is the most powerful and wealthy state in the world.  It’s economic dominance in tatters and its military failing abroad there is not much security left in the American psyche.  So what do these super-Americans do?  Why exploit the situation for personal gain of course.  After all that is the American way.  Lacking a coherent criticism of the Obama administration’s policies and fearing the popular surge that brought him into office in the last election, the far Right has reached into the past to resurrect the great Satan, the eternal boogie man of the Cold War, Socialism.  A word they know will fan the fear and paranoia already extant.  I see another remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers in our future.

Now people are showing up at presidential appearances sporting assault weapons.  I wonder how these same shock jocks would have reacted had someone shown up at a Bush appearance with an AR15?  Oh wait I seem to remember security ejecting a couple of people from an event for simply wearing anti-Bush T-shirts.  In America you have the right to bear arms at a presidential event but not insults.  Never mind, we on the Left prefer to take people out with footwear,  not guns.  How long before some confused and misinformed American attempts to assassinate President Obama in a righteous rage brought on by the words of these depraved disseminators of dissociative behaviour?  Or an already disturbed individual seizes his opportunity to be a hero or just to become immortal like Lee Harvey Oswald?  The stage is set.  It may no longer be an if but a when.  Rhetoric is already turning to action and unless the flames are dowsed soon it is only a matter of time before at least an attempt is made on the president’s life.  Like the reckless person in the theatre yelling fire, Beck, Limbaugh and the rest of the provocateurs should then be held accountable for their actions.  They should be charged as conspirators and if the attempt is successful, assassins.  The full weight of the law should be brought to bear on them just as it would be on me if I yell fire when there is none and someone dies.  Their actions make them as guilty as if they pulled the trigger themselves.

British Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, included Savage (real name Michael Weiner.  Great, we Germans spend a half century trying to outlive the stereotype only to have this idiot come along.) in a list of people persona non grata in the United Kingdom.  For this Savage is threatening to sue.  He claims he has never incited violence on his talk show or in his writings.  Technically that may be true.  I have never actually heard Savage say ‘Go forth and smite down the democratic liberal wherever you find him, in expresso bar or at Gay Pride Parade.’  Does he need to say this to be inciting violence?  No.  But will shutting him up stop these attitudes? Also no.  This is hearts and mind time and censoring Savage will not change the mind of one bigot. 

Silencing his message from the public airways will only drive it underground and add to its mystique.  More, it gives the message credibility.  Why censor something unless you are afraid of it.  Believe me that will be his spin on the matter.  ‘They know I speak the truth, that is why they fear me.  They fear that I might tell you what they don’t want you to know.’  His message doesn’t need to be silenced it needs to be challenged.  Isn’t it interesting that these champions of freedom seldom allow themselves to be caught in a public debate with anyone able to expose them as the frauds and fools that they are.  Cowards naturally shrink from a fight.  When they are caught as happened when Bill O’Reilly interviewed Phil Donahue on Fox the shallowness of their position reveals itself.  When Bill began his talk-over terrorism of his guest, a style common to these types, the articulate Donahue rose to the occasion and left O’Reilly sputtering back on the ropes desperate to survive the round.  That is what is needed to counteract the menace of these self-righteous megalomaniacs. 

Those of us old enough to remember Alan Berg, a American Left Wing radio shock jock murdered outside his home by Right Wing extremists, know that challenging these sociopaths has its risks.  Glenn Beck fantasized on his radio show about killing Michael Moore saying he thought he would be able to do it himself rather than hire a hitman.  His words dripped an underlying desire to really do this not just fantasize.  Nothing worthwhile comes without risk.  If we don’t soon begin to challenge these miscreants we will condemn ourselves and our posterity.  Their view of the world is unsustainable; left unchecked apocalyptic war and environmental catastrophe are certain.  Challenging the pied-pipers of doom sounds worthwhile to me.  Donahue, Moore and others have proved it can be done.  You and I can do it too.   Don’t sit by complacently when a colleague or acquaintance parrots the latest vitriol from one of these idols of ignorance.  Fight back!  Most of us would feel uncomfortable sitting passively while someone made a pejorative remark about Blacks or women.  There is no reason why we should condone with silence similar comments and ideas about immigrants, the poor, or homosexuals or any group whose only offense is their existence.  Nor is it wise to leave unchecked ideas that will cripple our biosphere. 

Political correctness has allowed hatred to hide.  Censorship does just the same.  It makes the stupid the mysterious.  I don’t want these ideas and hatreds hidden.  I want them in the clear light of day where I can draw a good bead on them and shoot them down.  So don’t call for censorship.  Join me on the firing squad and execute ignorance with suppositories of wisdom.