Tragedy in Arizona; shameful politicizing

It wasnt very long after shots had rung out in Tucson that we began hearing words like “vitriol”, venomous” “hate-mongering”. All associated with the left pointing a finger of blame toward the right.

Sigh. How did those of us with sense and sensibility know this was coming?

Because this is exactly what we expect of those who refuse to ever take responsibility for their own actions and therefore to ever place blame on anyone for THEIR own actions?

Jared Loughner acted on his own. Out of the depths of his own “nihilistic rut” and  sick, twisted mind, he fashioned a hatred for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords which, because he does display traits of a psychotic personality, made very little sense.

The left wing media nut jobs all over the press and the internet have placed blame on everyone from Sarah Palin, to Fox News, to Rush Limbaugh and probably George Bush (after all, doesnt he get blamed for everything?)

The stark reality which stood out in my mind on Saturday after listening to Sheriff Clarence Dupnik of Pima County during his press conference where he blasted Conservative radio and television for inciting violence and vitriolic rhetoric, was that here we just had a national tragedy occur.  People were killed and injured. People were in shock. The nation was in shock and yet somehow placing blame, within mere minutes of these shootings, was paramount in the minds of many liberals.

Blaming Sarah Palin for the map she had on her Facebook page is the worst of the attacks. Target maps, such as this one, have been around the political arena for ages.  The Democrats used a famous one in 2004 as they planned their strategy for the upcoming elections. Maps such as these are used to point out districts where one party needs to concentrate their efforts toward taking over that constituency from another party. When Jared Loughner was losing his sanity and stalking Congresswoman Giffords,  the name Sarah Palin wasnt a household name in any state, save Alaska.

Perhaps language does need to be toned down a bit in light of Saturday’s shootings. After all, wasnt it Barack Obama who made the statement “the Republicans are our enemies and if they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun”? Pretty heavy statement in my book and a case could easily be made that rhetoric such as this could incite and stir up violence, especially in someone who is already left of center.

The point I want to make by quoting Obama isnt to place blame on him for his statement as much as it is to tell people that comments such as that are made everyday in the political arena and certainly with no intent to cause the sort of violence we saw in Tucson this past weekend.

To point a finger at Sarah Palin is to do exactly what the left is saying was done by her to incite Jared Loughlin. Is it so hard to see that bringing such negative attention to a mere politcal strategy map could cause a riot against Sarah Palin and yet something tells me that (God forbid) if someone did try to attack Palin, the commentary from our liberal media wouldnt come even close to the blame game which has been being played out for the past 3 days.

It is astounding to me that our media acted so irresponsibly this past weekend. The words “probably” and “most likely” were thrown around in abundance and that was because blame was being placed long before anyone even knew the name of the shooter. People were still lying in their own pools of blood and instead of falling to our knees and asking God for help and guidance when our country clearly needs it, we have politicians trying to one-up each other in a game of “who said what and who did what”.

I am ashamed of the way the MSM acted and with good reason. I am equally ashamed of many of our Democratic legislators who chose this as an opportunity to (in their minds) score points.

If blame is so almighty important, lets examine where blame COULD lie.

The inevitable “15-minutes of fame” friends, peers, teachers etc. have all come crawling out of the woodwork in the ensuing days to tell their version of how mentally unbalanced Jared has been over the past 5-7 years. We have a professor saying that he was afraid to turn his back to write on the blackboard for fear he might be shot in the back.

We have a fellow student sending an email to the professor fearing that Jared might, someday, show up in class with a gun.

We have a community college expelling him from classes with the admonishment to get a mental health checkup.

We have our military saying “no thanks” possibly because of a drug arrest but also possibly because Jared just couldnt pass muster in the psychology testing.

And finally, we have his parents, who ultimately,  MUST take a good, long, hard look at their son and their parenting of him.

With all of the above being said, do we really need to blame government officials and conservative media? I dont think so.

Yes, there is blame to place and it would seem plenty of it to go around, but no, it shouldnt be placed on the shoulders of Sarah Palin or Fox News or anyone else in the media or political arena.

This young man is clearly questionable in his ability to navigate functionally in our world.  Signs were everywhere. He fell thru the cracks of our mental health system. His parents and educators and even our military let him and ultimately all of us, down, by not stepping in when clearly there was evidence to do just that.

When blame is what is important for those of you who feel that somehow blame makes what happened on Saturday easy to understand….then lay the blame squarely on the shoulders of Jared Lee Loughner who chose to commit this heinous act and at the feet of the many people who did nothing, when something needed to be done, long before Saturday at Safeway.