By now I’m sure my readers are familiar with yesterday’s tragic shooting in Arizona, which killed six people and left Congressional Representative Gabrielle Giffords hospitalized with a bullet through her brain. At this time, her long-term prognosis is unknown, but doctors are expressing guarded optimism that she will at least survive.
What infuriates me is the rush to judgment by many media sources and political activists, seeking to politicize this tragedy and use it as a tool to further their own ends. Isn’t in enough that innocent people are dead and injured, without trying to score points or make political capital out of it? Is there no decency left in US politics any more? It certainly seems not . . .
I think my blogbuddy and bestselling author Larry Correia put it very well in a searing article on his blog. Here’s an excerpt.
I wasn’t even paying attention until I stupidly took a break from writing (ironically, about an incident involving a lone nut assassin in 1933) and went onto Facebook where I discovered that there had been a shooting and that it had been caused by (in order of evil): Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Arizonans in favor of closing the border, Rush Limbaugh, the Tea Party, and easy access to guns… Whew. My people came in last for once!
So I looked into it, fully expecting the shooter to be some right-wing crazy spouting off Ayn Rand.
Nope. Not even close. But I forgot. Reality doesn’t matter.
Right after the shooting, before anyone knew what was going on, so early that the president himself didn’t even know if the congresswoman was deceased or not, the Daily Kos (the mixed nut selection par excellence) ran an article about how this was Sarah Palin’s fault because Giffords was one of the members of congress she had “targeted”.
Targeted. Yes, to get voted out of office. I missed the part about shooting them.
. . .
Only in la-la land can you stretch that far and still sound credible. The rest of us just scratch our heads and feel kind of sorry for you.
. . .
An Arizona sheriff (you get one guess where he falls on the whole secure the border thing) issued a statement yesterday saying that “Arizona has become a Mecca for prejudice and bigotry”.
What is with these people? Do they wait for something awful to happen so that they can harness it to whatever their pet issue is? Yes. The white congresswoman and a bunch of white people were shot by a crazy white guy because of prejudice against Mexicans. Do these idiots ever listen to themselves? Wait… shouldn’t the sheriff have to apologize for using the word Mecca in a negative light?
There’s more at the link. Go read the whole thing. It’s worth it.
Meanwhile, let’s keep Representative Giffords and her family, and the other injured persons and their families, and the dead, and their families, in our prayers. They’re the victims who need help and healing right now. To hell with those trying to score political points on the back of their misery!
Peter
I've not had it in my physically or mentally to write of this, but all I can say is AMEN.
Crazy is just that, crazy. Son't blame it on a party, a person, a thought process, it's simply evil made human form through drug and alcohol abuse and/or major misfirings of the brain. If he'd not had a gun he'd have used something else.
Thank you for saying it so well.