John Steele Gordon:
All the evidence currently available indicates that the gunman responsible for Saturday's tragedy in Tucson, Ariz., was driven solely by internal demons. That fact hasn't stopped commentators, overwhelmingly on the left, from suggesting that today's "heated political rhetoric" is at least partly to blame.
Pundits have frequently cited Sarah Palin's "crosshairs map," which uses the riflery image to mark the congressional districts of vulnerable Democrats, as inspiration for the killer. But there is a total lack of evidence that the shooter ever saw that map or that "being in the crosshairs," which has been a common political metaphor for decades, has suddenly taken on a sinister meaning. And yet the New York Times's Paul Krugman writes in his latest column (titled "Climate of Hate"): "It's true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled. But that doesn't mean that his act can or should be treated as an isolated event, having nothing to do with the national climate."
Really? Has the nation's political climate actually gotten worse in the last two years, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the White House? Of course not.
Human beings have a natural tendency to edit memories, tending to cut out the unpleasant ones. We prefer to remember the sunny days, not the stormy ones. (Hence the constant refrain of "Today's blizzard is the worst—ever.") That's just as true of politics as anything else.
The truth is that American political rhetoric has always been vigorous and often vituperative. Over 60 years ago Harry Truman offered his famous admonition to get out of the kitchen if you can't stand the heat. Lyndon Johnson, in the sad later years of his presidency, was regularly hanged in effigy (as was Sarah Palin in the 2008 presidential campaign, by the way.) "Hey, hey, LBJ! How many kids have you killed today?" was shouted by demonstrators wherever he went. Johnson complained about the press that, "If I walked on water, the headline the next day would be 'President Can't Swim.'"
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There is more about the Democrats attempts to silence critics of their bad policies. I think that will continue to happen, but it is much harder for them to control the narrative these days, when their opponents have alternative media and the internet with which they can "return fire." Call it counter battery fire to use an artillery metaphor.
Image via Wikipedia
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