I feel like a child.
I was putting together new IKEA furniture for my living room, catching up on Season 1 of “Breaking Bad” (which has been holding up my Netflix queue for months), and in general enjoying my day off of work and writing.
I was enjoying myself so much that I left my phone and computer in the other room and gave myself a few hours off of catching up on the news.
When I returned to the news, I saw horror. Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, among nine others, was shot at a “Meet the Audience” type function. She wasn’t just shot. She was shot in the head. The bullet went through her brain, and she’s currently in critical condition. She may still die. Among those who did die was one of her aides, Federal Justice John Roll (who has served this country for decades) and a nine-year-old girl. They were shot by an angry young man who, thanks to Arizona’s recent concealed weapons law, was able to walk up to Rep. Giffords and attempt her coup-de-grace without a permit of any kind.
Most damning of all is that Rep. Giffords was already “targeted.” By Sarah Palin’s blog last year. She was a Democrat who voted for the passage of the Health Care Bill, and she was one of 20 who did so and was up for re-eleciton in 2010. Palin’s blog post put “target crosshairs” over the districts of each Congressperson and said “Don’t Retreat. Reload.”
I pray Ms. Palin never escapes this.
Palin is not alone in her culpability, however. Tea Partyers and Republicans have whipped jobless Americans into a frenzy over this Health Care Bill, and this was only a matter of time before someone became desperate enough to see this tragedy come to be.
I found myself reading the headline that a Congresswoman had been shot. My first question to myself was: “Democrat or Republican?” and not “Alive or Dead?”
I feel disgusting. We have to stop this immediately. Words have consequences, and this vilifying of people who believe different than we do only leads to dark places. Places like Fox News produce so much fear-mongering that eventually, just to survive, Democrats will have to as well.
And then we’re all fucked.
It’s just a Health Care Bill. I don’t understand. They’re just trying to make sure people get medicine, make people safer, what is so difficult to understand about that?
Our words have very severe consequences. Don’t you know that?
This whole tragedy makes me feel like a baby. Not a crying baby. Just an unsafe, confused, helpless lump of matter. Here is President Obama to speak on the matter. Even though the text is just empty words, he has a gift for making me feel safe, and importantly, so glad he’s here.
