We are all going to hear excuses for what just happened. The right will avoid any sott of self criticism, Glenn Beck will somehow find a way to blame this on Obama. The left, at least most of it, will try to appear rational by not using the word bigot to describe any of the
hate speakers on Fox responsible for this horror.
I fear that even fewer good people will now have the courage to run for public office. Free speech will become more and more limited to the right wing preachers’ podium and the flat screen TV. As Howard Feinman writes at Huffington, “The shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is a watershed event in many ways, some of which we cannot yet know, but one of the clearest and simplest is this: Congress and its members are about to be permanently quarantined, physically isolated, from the people it and they represent.”
I was especially moved by Alan Graysons’s remarks:
“…I just want to say what it means to me.
Gabrielle Giffords and I served together on the House Committee on Science and Technology. She was the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, and I was a member of that subcommittee. Her D.C. office was one floor above mine.
I saw Gabby dozens, if not hundreds of times, during our two years together. And nearly every time that I can remember, she was smiling.
Gabby is one of the most cheerful, charming and engaging people I have ever known. She’s always looking on the bright side. She has something good to say about pretty much everyone. Bad news never lays a glove on her. She loves life, and all the people in it.
No matter what is going on in your life, after fifteen minutes with Gabby, you’ll feel that you can touch the stars.
Everyone knew that Gabby would have a tough race in 2010. (She actually won with 49% of the vote.) But I always thought that if each of her constituents could spend that fifteen minutes with her, and see what she is really like, then she would win with 99.9% of the vote. (Same thing about Harry Teague of New Mexico, who lost, and a few others that I could name.) You would want her as your Congressman, because you would want her as your friend.
I know nothing about the man who shot Gabby, and what was going through his mind when he did this. But I will tell you this – if he shot Gabby out of hatred, then it wasn’t Gabby he was shooting, but rather some cartoon version of her, drawn by her political opposition. Because there is no way – NO WAY – that anyone who really knows Gabby could hate her or hurt her. She is a kind, gentle soul.
My heart goes out to Mark Kelly, Gabby’s husband, and the many, many people who love her. Gabby, we don’t want to lose you. Please stay here with us.”
Alan Grayson
There is nothing new about this shooting. It is merely the latest in an unending litany of almost daily news reports about acts of violence committed by people seemingly pushed over the edge by a combination of mental illness and situational stress in their lives. This guy appears more whacko than politically motivated. The question we need to ask ourselves is why more people are “acting out” in more violent ways? It’s hard for me to believe that our popular entertainment culture, which emphasizes violence and extreme behavior, has nothing to do with it. It defies credulity that these actors don’t see this stuff in movies and on TV, and then emulate it.
On Saturday morning, one way or another Tucson and perhaps the nation temporarily lost a shining example of what a true politician should be – a politician that represents her constituents and not the interests of the moneyed interests. Gabby is still on the way to recovery, but during this trip, we, the constituents of D8 won’t have a scrappy fighter in Congress watching out for our interests. Most of D8 will keep her in our thoughts and prayers wishing her a speedy recovery, but I don’t think the guardians of the right-wing agenda will. The hate and inflammatory speech – witness the campaign lies about being her being soft on border enforcement, in fact she was one of the staunchest supporters of improving border security; lies about how her support for health care would bankrupt the nation – all of these lies were paid for by out-of-state anonymous right-wing groups in an effort to subvert our constitutional rights of self-determination and further the agenda of the fundamentalist right to create a monolithic Christian regime with only one world view, theirs. The lies, the hateful rhetoric – all of these things inflame the more unstable minds and cause havoc for the rest of the law-abiding citizens of this Great Land and if allowed, will enslave us instead of freeing us.
Whatever your faith, may your One God Bless and Save Gabby.