I have to say some of the responses to my original post have been shocking. First, to suggest this event is not important because it is not “statistically relevant” sounds insane itself. It is relevant to the people who are dead or injured. What a dumb thing to say.
As for the comments coming from others about the decline of America – I too worry deeply about this. The divisiveness and focus on what separates us rather than what brings us together is dangerous and sad.
Where there are differences, we need to work to cooperation and try our very best to incremental movement to the best solutions. We just don’t live in a one size fits all world. This does not mean that any of us have to give up our values, the tenets of our faith or anything else. It means we have to be civil while we use acceptable logical and persuasive means to solve problems.
The vitriol and violent language used by our leaders or our public is wrong. Crying FIRE in a crowded movie theater is both immoral and illegal.
I understand, but I think the language and the focus is a symptom, not the disease itself. What has happened is that the political parties have become more homogenous; that is to say, the Democrats are much further to the left than they were when, for example, I was a party officeholder. The Republican party has undergone a different, but similar phenomenon. It hasn’t so much lurched to the right as it has been abandoned by all but a handful of the more liberal Republicans.
But the result for both is the same. Their respective visions of America are starkly different now, much more different than they were decades ago when the Democrats had people like Jackson, Humphrey and, yes, JFK, (not to mention the Dixiecrats) and the Republicans had the Nelson Rockerfellers among its influential numbers.
Oddly enough, to one who was heavily involved in Democrat politics like I was years ago, it appears the current Republican party most strongly resembles the Democrat party of that era, and the Democrat party now most strongly resembles the Rockefeller Republicans.
And, to top it off, there was a very strong and very recent pull to the left with the influence of people like George Soros, whose vision of America is so far to the left in every way that it does not even remotely resemble what most Americans would prefer to envision. On the other side, the Tea Party people are, as near as I can tell, mainly fed up with government overregulation and overspending and are pulling the Republicans toward greater fiscal restraint than they demonstrated the last time they were really in power some four years ago. That doesn’t mean they see eye to eye with the Republicans in every way, and I doubt they do. But it really has inspired Republicans and even some Democrats whose constituencies are not reliably left-wing to reconsider the careless spending. If anything good comes of the last four years of political wrangling, that one thing might be the sole positive result. If it happens, it will happen BECAUSE of the political struggle, not in spite of it.
Yes, there have been some Blue Dog Democrats, and Gifford is one of them, at least in some ways. But Nancy Pelosi made a bunch of them walk the plank for unpopular programs, the consequence of which they lost their offices. Some didn’t, so the constituencies of some must like what they did. So, the polarization has not ended.
But regardless, it is just wrong to think the assassination attempt on Rep. Gifford was in any way inspired by the current relationships between Democrats and Republicans. The nut-case types have been around since before any of the current officeholders were born. It’s horrible, it’s tragic, but it will probably never really go away as a danger.
