"Will No One Rid Us of These Troublesome Liberal Congressmen?" or "Elections, Filipino Style"

Much column ink and billions of pixels will be used by the Right in furiously distancing themselves from yesterday's assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson.[1]

We should not let them get away with it.

You don't get to use imagery like this:

and then be surprised when some weak-brained lunatic acts on it.[2]

You don't get to bleat about "Second Amendment remedies" and then be shocked, shocked, that some clown took you seriously.

This nation is a democratic nation. If your candidate loses the election, or if your party gets thrown out of office, the proper response, indeed, the only response, is to work harder to persuade the voters that your guys are worthy of office. This is not the Philippines or Pakistan, where it is a practice to try to kill elected officials from the other party.

The Right, however, has been using eliminationist rhetoric for decades. You can go back to President Kennedy, who was so demonized by the Right that their children cheered in school upon news that he had been assassinated.

It is by no means unusual to hear conservatives call for the killing of Democrats. I have heard that, firsthand, at public meetings that were called to discuss immigration.[3] And then there is this, from Sully's blog:

I am standing in the aisle at Costco when I found out my Congresswomen, Gabrielle Giffords, has been shot dead up on the north side.

While I’m scrambling with my phone, two couples in front of me are talking about it and suddenly I hear one of the women say, “Well, that’s to be expected when you’re so liberal.”

That is the atmosphere that the Right has generated. That is the tone from the batshit bloviators on hate radio and Fox News. The Right has been using the rhetoric of hatred and violence for several decades and now there is no shortage of people out there who think it is acceptable to shoot politicians and groups with whom they disagree. This is not the first shooting of those the right has demonized.

The Right owns this one. They cannot blather on about "taking out" opposing politicians or using the rhetoric of violence or preaching virulent hatred for those whom they disagree and then profess shock and amazement when someone whose hinges have come loose takes them up on it.

This is probably the point, Gentle Reader, where you might expect that I would call upon the Right to mull over their rhetoric and consider the effect of their words. I will do no such thing, for I believe that I would see a unicorn prance across a snow-covered field before I would see the Right come to grips with the clearly evident fact that they have been purveyors of hatred and violence. Oh, they'll make excuses and mutter about that it was just words and nobody should have taken them seriously. They'll try to run away from the point that words have power and that the rhetoric of violence makes violence acceptable.

So nothing will change. If Rep. Giffords survives, she will have to endure a very long period of physical and mental rehabilitation. The dead will be buried and mourned and soon forgotten. And the purveyors of hate on the American equivalents of Radio Rwanda will keep running their mouths. And more people will die.

I have no solution to offer.

We are so screwed.
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[1] I am distinguishing the Right from the libertarians. Every libertarian blogger who I have read since yesterday has been horrified by the shootings.
[2] This is where I should point out that, when some clown who played Grand Theft Auto goes out and re-enacts a crime from the game, the censorship goons on the Right have no problems whatsoever with blaming the game for the crime.
[3] Not by the panel members, but by members of the audience who, when hearing a person refer to Nancy Pelosi, would say that she should be shot.

UPDATE: What BadTux said.