I am a Democrat living in a Republican neighborhood. No matter how hot the political debate gets I would never consider harming any of my neighbors nor would they harm me.
Yet there are those among us who feed the fires of hate driving marginalized people to extreme acts of violence. My neighbors never praised Sarah Palin when she put up her map showing gun crosshairs over certain congressional districts or said “reload” or when others said we should bleed the tree of liberty or “if we cannot succeed with ballots then we will succeed with bullets.”
Democrats and Republicans should not be held liable for this hate speech but those who fostered it should regardless of party affiliation.
And these very people are the very first to offer condolences sort of like the teenager who shoots a deer and feels so bad vows never to do it again. Well, that is good but the deer is dead.
What I am saying is it will take more than simple apologies to clear the air here especially when one political group takes time out from its apology to go out of their way to label Congresswoman Giffords a “liberal” when she is in fact a conservative Democrat. Yes this group was still engaged in one-upmanship even in the aftermath of this terrible tragedy. Yes there must be apologies but more than that is needed, there needs to be action there needs to be a change in the very character of the political discourse in this country.
And those who created this atmosphere of hate must be held accountable in the courtroom of public opinion because all our actions have consequences and nowhere is this more apparent than in this weekend’s shooting spree in Arizona.