By A. Daniel (Dan) Bodine
Admittedly this should be one of those no-brainers, as our mamas use to warn us, but whenever in the heat of religious or political discourse we need to watch our mouths, for fear someone may take the words the wrong way. Ain't that the old-fashioned way we “seniors” were raised? Or most of us? It's not now. Explosive economic growth during the Sunbelt Era transformed us, I have long argued. Greed and thirst for power have propelled ugliness into our midst.
Last Saturday's deadly carnage in Tucson, AZ, of course, is but one more example of what happens when ill-conceived, political hate rhetoric trumps common sense. A young local malcontent many are now describing as being mentally ill took a 33-round Glock semi-automatic pistol to a local Congressional constituent meeting and shot 19 people, six fatally.
One of the injured, now in critical condition, was Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz. Her district, scene of the shooting, was “targeted” in last fall's heated Congressional midterm elections as being essential for a Republican victory. She was shot up close in the head. Among those near her killed was a key federal judge, a Republican, there simply to speak to the Congresswoman about his mounting federal caseloads. It makes no sense, indeed.
Personally, my background includes 20 years in Texas newspapers, both dailies and weeklies, as a writer, editor and publisher. Most recently I've retired after another 18 years as a small-town Texas border judge—mostly as justice of the peace; many concurrent years, too, as municipal court judge (desertmountaintimes.com). The long and short is that I've reported on, observed and had to deal with the mentally ill and retarded on numerous occasions; and have especially been observant of their reactions to the sometimes off-cast way society treats them. From my experiences, it seems the nation and State of Texas in particular, has come a long way in improving how they're treated. But the situation still isn't pretty. We've too many loose cannons amongst us.
What will happen now to 22-year-old Jared Loughner, the accused shooter arrested soon after Saturday's incident, will be determined by the courts, of course. But get ready for another sideshow. The issue of mental illness is certain to be an issue in his trial. And like last year's rancorous national health debate, look for a genuine Showtime here, too—with the Left and Right and extremes of both shouting at each other for political points. One wonders, indeed, where all this will end?
“Targeting” political opponents--the latest ugly version of this virulent genre, such as it is in American political campaigning--has roots in the New Right's ouster of Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential elections, that saw Ronald Reagan elected. I learned it while researching and writing an M.A. Political Science thesis completed in '84. Right-wing conservatives, emboldened and eager to profit by the Sunbelt's explosive growth in the South, Southwest, and West, recruited the nation's evangelicals into battle, using most notably the Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority; and drew up “hit lists” of liberal Democratic candidates in congressional districts around the country to take down.
That system of success has only been tweaked and fine-tuned further since, no doubt, by both major political parties. But how much longer can this nation continue to allow such an apparently irreversible and polarizing method of campaigning to encroach into a system of government that can only function thru compromise? Loughner is an excellent example of how it's poisoned us as a people, the argument can be made.
He previously attended one of Giffords community meetings in 2007, only to ask, “What is government if words have no meaning?” according to a close friend, Bryce Tierney, in an exclusive interview with Mother Jones Magazine (motherjones.com) posted on the net Jan. 10. And the response, whatever it was, ticked him off. “Ever since that, he thought she was fake, he had something against her,” Tierney said. Earlier reports had Loughner flunking a drug test when he attempted to enter the U.S. Army after that, but Tierney doubted it. And raised mental culpability instead.
Nick Baumann, author of the MJ article, quoted Tierney as having told him as time went on his friend apparently further succumbed to a delusional, “nihilist” view of the world which he'd first started forming in high school. Loughner was “obsessed with 'lucid dreaming'” Baumann wrote in the article, “--that is, the idea that conscious dreams are an alternative reality that a person can inhabit and control—and (Tierney) says Loughner became 'more interested in this (dream) world than our reality.'”
Furthermore, there's a “dream journal” Loughner kept that should be telltale evidence about the accuser's mind. “I saw his dream journal once. That's the golden piece of evidence. You want to know what went on in Jared Loughner's mind...that will tell you everything.”
The dreamer was believed to be unemployed. He enrolled last summer in a special community college class, apparently to bolster his learning level, but didn't last long. News accounts said the instructor kicked him out because of disruptions. The years after high school are troubling enough as they are, but to be searching for a decent job now with no more educational background than he had was especially troubling, one can imagine.
And last year's fiery political climate--especially in Arizona, inflamed as it was already with passage of what appeared to be such a bold anti-immigration law--further ensnared Loughner and his way of dreaming, one could also easily argue. After all, Giffords was battling Jesse Kelly, a fiery Tea Party challenger and former U. S. Marine who served in Iraq, who was furious over the passage of health care reform.
On his website during the campaign, in encouraging turnout for his fundraisers, he posted a photo of himself holding his automatic weapon. An ethics problem, you think? Valeria Fernandez, a New America Media writer, in a story posted on alternet.org earlier today, hinted such. In “Giffords Shootings: The Poisonous Fruit of Arizona's Vicious Politics,” she quotes the Associated Press as reporting that Kelly not only held fundraisers with the website's promotions but also “urged supporters to help remove Giffords from office by joining him to shoot a fully loaded M-16 rifle.”
Over the edge maybe? Wait 'til Loughner's trial! Judy Clarke, a federal public defender who has handled such cases as Ted Kaczynski, the notorious Unabomber, has been assigned the case. If you're going to purchase anything for the show, please don't make it a gun, however. Popcorn will do fine. Maybe a little butter on it.
Hah! Now that's our traditional spirit! Hee, hee.
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