Arizona shooting: Wild west politics

[BlueMTexpat]

From The Guardian (UK, of course) ...

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But what happened in Tucson cannot be brushed aside as one of those things that could happen to anyone in public life anywhere. It happened to an articulate, moderate, pro-business, pro-gun, female Democrat in the United States at a time of deepening and increasingly obsessive partisan polarisation. The US already had a distinctive history of political violence in the modern era. The assassinations of the 1960s, the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995 and a series of attacks on abortion clinics have all been evidence of the readiness of a small but significant group of mainly male, mainly white, mainly rightwing, mainly religious conservative Americans to use lawless, lethal violence against real or imagined examples of political movements or institutions by which they deem themselves threatened. ...
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What is clear, though, is that every Republican and media loudmouth who has flirted with insurrectionary rhetoric – and a lot have – should examine their consciences. It is hard to disagree with Sheriff Clarence Dupnik in Tucson, who lamented after the shooting that "the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous". In many countries, an event like this might shock the political class into collective determination to change the tone. It is a measure of how different American politics has now become that it is hard to expect any such thing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/10/editorial-arizona-shooting-gabrielle-giffords?intcmp=239