Arizona Shooting, the Limits of "Normal" and Our Future (2 views)
1. Arizona Shooting Means We Have Reached the Limits of the "Normal" (Roberto Lovato) 2. The Tucson Massacre and Our Future - An Analysis (Lawrence Davidson ========== Arizona Shooting Means We Have Reached the Limits of the "Normal" by Roberto Lovato Submitted to Portside by the author Huffington Post January 13, 2011 -- 02:17 PM http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roberto-lovato/arizona-shooting-means-we_b_808689.html Like her friend Gabby Giffords and like her former colleague, the late Judge Roll, Isabel Garcia has known the hatred that can kill. Garcia, a Pima County public defender and outspoken immigrant rights activist, was shocked and moved by Saturday's shooting near the Safeway on Tucson's palm tree and mesquite-studded northside. But she was not surprised at the slaughter of so many innocents. "I'm praying for Gabby and the other victims. This is very sad," she told me when I called her recently. "It makes me very sad knowing that there are lots of people in Tucson capable of doing these things, lots of people with guns and hatred" she said, adding "It makes you even sadder that we couldn't do anything to prevent it." Her positions in defense of immigrants make her a favorite target of Tucson's radio shock jocks and local Republicans -- and Democrats -- whose rhetoric and denunciations fueled, she believes, the numerous death threats that she herself has received. "Unfortunately, it was only a matter of time before things blew up even more. The anger and fear have become 'normal' here." Garcia's insights and concerns about the larger culture of fear and violence spinning out of control in Tucson are shared by many from among the group that, according to FBI hate crime statistics, is most targeted by that fear and violence throughout Arizona and the entire country: Latinos. Latinos have a very particular response to these developments; we understand how extremist groups and right wing think tanks, well-heeled foundations and Tea Party activists have turned Arizona into the largest laboratory for mainstreaming the extreme in the United States. As much as any group, Latinas like Garcia understand that it's not just the "deranged", "lone gunmen" and "mentally ill" we must be weary of; we understand that Jared Loughner acted within and drew from a political and cultural climate increasingly prone to fear, hatred and violence. We understand that the Tucson tragedy means we have reached the limits of the "normal." The killing of nine year-old Christina-Taylor Green, for example, surely stirs memories among many of us of the trauma-inducing murder of another nine-year-old local, Brisenia Flores. Flores was killed by a woman affiliated with organizations designated hate groups, groups like the Federation of Immigration Reform whose smart-suited, rational-sounding spokespeople are regularly sought out by national media outlets as "experts on immigration." Rather than simply watch as entertainment the doings of Joe Arpaio, "America's Toughest Sheriff," on network newscasts and syndicated television shows, our first response is to ask, "'tough' on who?" Though some of us recognize the inherent racism of referring to the Grand Canyon state as a "a mecca for racism and bigotry" (ie; we wouldn't call Arizona a "Jerusalem of hatred"), we understand the reality behind controversial Sheriff Dupnik's statement. Until Saturday's attack on Giffords and her followers at a political event, the primary political issue heating up the headlines, classrooms and streets of Tucson since I visited there several months ago has been the ban on Latinos learning about their history and culture in ethnic studies classes. Latinos studying themselves means they're not "normal." Attacking Latinos for studying themselves is. It can even get you elected to high office. And prior to the ethnic studies ban, both the state political process and much of the country's body politic were politically and physically (i.e. a Latino man in Phoenix was killed in a racist attack by his white neighbor in one of several largely unreported hate crimes) clashing around SB-1070, Arizona's racial profiling law. While many of us will join Daniel Hernandez and President Obama in their call for civil discourse, we will do so without losing sight of the fact that, for disconcerting numbers of "regular Americans", hate and fear are the new normal. That Senate President Russell Pearce, the author of SB-1070 and one of Arizona's most powerful politicians, sat in solemn attendance at the memorial was duly noted by many. But his attendance and the calls for "civil discourse" will not, should not erase less-publicized knowledge of the fact that Pearce has ties to the Neo-Nazi extremist groups whose members he has praised and whose rallies he has attended. To many of us, the "deranged lone gunmen" on the desert fringe can sometimes bear more than a passing resemblance to the God-fearing, gun-wielding patriot filling our cities and suburbs; we see how the "rugged individualism" of a previous era is being hijacked by powerful interests. As I watch reports of the shooting, I remember the death threats from white men with guns who didn't like my work defending immigrants and others. So, when we read that the Department of Homeland Security suspects that Jared Loughner is "possibly connected" to American Renaissance, one of Arizona's many and growing racist, anti-immigrant groups, many of us see someone who, deranged or not, draws from the deep wells of verbal, visual and physical violence in the substratum of US civilization; We agree with scholars like Richard Florida who understand Tucson's troubles as reflective of how "deep seated regional and cultural factors play a substantial role in mass violence." And like Garcia and the national hero of the moment, Daniel Hernandez, many of us will look at the blood-splattered abyss on the street near Safeway and act decisively to find a newer, truly safer way to deal with these influences on Jared Loughner and other, more "normal" people, people carrying unconcealed guns on their waists and increasingly normalized hatred in their hearts. [Roberto Lovato is a writer and the Co-Founder, Presente.org He is a New York-based writer with New America Media and a frequent contributor to The Nation Magazine. He' has written for the Los Angeles Times, Salon, Der Spiegel, Utne Magazine, La Opinion, and other national and international media outlets, and has appeared as a source and commentator on English and Spanish language network news shows on Univision, CNN, PBS and other programs. Prior to becoming a writer, Lovato was the former Executive Director of CARECEN, which was the largest immigrant rights organization in the country. You can find him posting regularly on media, migration, politics and other issues at his blog, www.ofamerica.wordpress.com ] ========== The Tucson Massacre and Our Future - An Analysis by Lawrence Davidson To The Point Analyses - Deconstructing the News January 12, 2011 http://www.tothepointanalyses.com/ There are two groups responsible for the January 8th tragedy in Tucson Arizona. One group is made up of right wing Republicans, Tea Party fanatics, and extremist conservative talk show personalities. These people have, for too long now, been consciously creating an atmosphere in which illegal acts of intimidation and violence are mistaken for patriotism. It does not matter if members of this group are self-deceived "patriots" or just political opportunists. The nature of their actions were and are predictably disastrous. When Sarah Palin placed a map on her website showing the whereabouts of twenty Democratic politicians, including Gabrielle Giffords, using, in Palin's words, "bullseye icons" (that is gun sights), she essentially committed an act of criminal incitement. Anyone with average intelligence can recognize this to be so given the pre-existing combustible environment created by the near criminal speech of people like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that when she released her metaphoric invitation to violence Palin knew that among her supporters were a large number of angry white men armed to the teeth with everything from handguns to bazookas. The fact that in the case of Tucson (not the first or the last case), it was allegedly a mentally unstable fellow who acted out this violence is irrelevant to the fact that the pre-existing climate of incitement was palpable. What Palin, Beck and their kind are practicing is not free speech. It is the equivalent of, as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, "crying fire in a crowded theater." However, the situation would never have gotten to its present explosive level without the complementary behavior of the second group. And that is the country's center/liberal establishment, including the Democratic Party leadership, all of whom have failed to treat the right wing threat seriously. It does not matter if members of this group simply misjudged the situation or they had the mistaken notion that to confront it would only make things worse. In either case they were wrong. Whether we consider Al Gore's response to the stolen presidential election of 2000 or Barack Obama's consistent refusal to prosecute the criminal acts of the Bush era extremists, these center/liberal leaders have behaved irresponsibly in the face of a growing and recognizably dangerous situation. They do the country no favor by confronting a violent right with passivity or sorrowful words. It has been 153 years since Abraham Lincoln made his prescient House Divided speech. He did so in June of 1858 in Springfield Illinois. His words, which at the time were considered alarmist, went like this, "If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it." Making reference to continuing "slavery agitation" he went on "in my opinion it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached and passed." And then he told his audience (1,000 members of the original Republican Party) that "A house divided against itself cannot stand." The United States is, once more, increasingly a house divided. It is not divided by "slavery agitation" though some of the issues have their roots in that era. It is over fundamental differences in the meaning of the nation's Constitution and the very nature of government. These differences bring with them feelings that are just as emotional and inherently divisive as was slavery. There are a growing number of Americans who no longer believe in the modern interpretation and application of U.S. Constitution. They insist that the way Constitutional interpretation has evolved over the past half century is a betrayal of true American principles. Many of these Americans are apparently enamored of the 19th century outlook that the only government that is legitimate is that which sees to the police, the military and the law. Everything else should be a private concern. If you tax them for programs that have to do with social equity or economic justice (even in its pitifully weak form) or even to maintain public functions such as education, transportation and social services, they consider it theft and imagine that they are subject to a new tyranny. In addition, many of them are not willing to go along with any election that might run counter to their outlook. Some are very close to advocating sedition, and a few are obviously already gunning for their imagined "tyrants." The present center/liberal leadership is confused. As Lincoln put it, they do not know where they are, where they are going, or what to do. Unfortunately, unlike Lincoln, they are not prescient. They do not seem to understand that what is happening is not superficial or transient. They beg us not to "politicize" the Tucson massacre, as if the murders were not, prima facie, political acts. Lincoln knew that the house was dividing and that the process would "not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed." Our center/liberal establishment have yet to come to a similar understanding. Passivity and accommodation will not make right wing violence go away. Those who incite this violence as well as those who act it out have to be confronted in an aggressive yet principled fashion. One way to do this is to enforce the law in a way that prioritizes our problems in a common sense fashion and ceases to practice double standards. In other words, it is time for President Obama to tell his Justice Department and the FBI to stop chasing around the mid-west harassing people friendly to the Palestinians and to start going after that element of the American right that is inciting its members to act out their political rage. They can start by taking a look at the activities of one Sarah Palin. [Lawrence Davidson is a history professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. He is a contributing editor to Logos: A Journal of Modern Society & Culture, His blog, To the Point Analyses can be found at: http://www.tothepointanalyses.com ] ========== ___________________________________________ _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
