Ratcheting up the vitriol of political debate

The shooting in Tucson, Arizona, yesterday, of Gabrielle Giffords and others at a "Congress on the Corner" event she held is a terrible and indefensible act. The man who did the shooting, Jared Loughner, is apparently some kind of a nut. I haven't seen anything he's written -- and he did have MySpace page -- but many commentators have reported a kind of rambling gibberish about the government trying to control us all through grammar or whatever. (And I'm sure there are a few in Washington who wish it was that easy.)

I hope Rep. Giffords comes out of this all right. If you know anything about brain geography, it seems that while the injury didn't affect any areas of the brain that control motor functions -- like breathing or muscular activity -- she might lose a lot of her memories, maybe some verbal skills, things like that. According to news reports, the doctor-surgeon who attended her is, coincidentally, one of the best of in the world. So here's hoping he will do whatever is possible to minimize the damage.

And Giffords wasn't the only one assaulted. Others were killed, including a nine-year-old girl who went with a neighbor to the event to see how our government works. The accompanying neighbor was shot four times. A federal judge was killed. Two elderly ladies were killed. This isn't how our government is supposed to work.

In a totally irresponsible statement, Sheriff Dupnik of Tucson came on TV shortly after the shooting and noted that this tragic event was all the fault of the "political vitriol" broadcast by certain radio personalities and TV channels. Sheriff Dupnik's remarks are a better example of ratcheting up the vitriol than anything people like Rush Limbaugh or commentators on Fox could come up with.

Dupnik claims that what he calls "radical" political speech drives unstable individuals to do crazy and violent things -- overlooking his own quite apparent knee-jerk bias in assuming that anyone who owns a gun is a right-wing nut-job on the prowl for democrat politicians. His unfounded leap to this conclusion indicates more than a little instability on Dupnik's part, and perhaps an inclination to be unduly influenced by the vitriolic rhetoric spewed by Huffington Post and the New York Times. He seems to be fanning the flames of violent political confrontation more than the radio personalities he's accusing.

Don't want to focus on Dupnik and the other looney-toons who latch onto unfounded conclusions based on unfounded stereotypes. I'll take that up in more detail later.

I just hope Rep Giffords recovers, and that the dems don't exploit this truly horrible event to promote things like gun control, or to further insulate legislators with layers of security. After all, there are reps and senators who would appear to be much more attractive targets for political violence than Giffords, and no one from the Tea Party or even the militias have assaulted them. We've had shouting matches at Town Halls, a lot of truly passionate rhetoric from both sides, and the result was -- a big political shift in the last election.

That's how American government is supposed to work.

Save the Republic.