The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    November 22 (a repeat)

    By Barth on Sun, 01/09/2011 - 10:10am |

    To try to repeat or somehow add to what Articleman posted last night or what Sheriff Dupnik, a hero way before yesterday, but his heroism renewed last night, told the nation, is an absurdity.  They said it all.  Yet, all of us with a keyboard need to vent, and to say what we all know to be so.

    But, for me, time is precious today and, rather than write something new, I want to just republish something that appeared first on November 22, 2009,  http://edsbarth.blogspot.com/2009/11/november-22.html.   I post every year on that date:  a searingly important one to so many of us of a certain age, but this one addressed the issue of today.  I make no claims of special insight or eloquence, but linking to it does not seem sufficient since this diary says almost exactly what I want to say now after what happened yesterday.  The Sheriff, a true hero and not just because of yesterday, said it all, but that won’t stop me from saying more.

    This is what appeared here (well, TPM Cafe, in 2009):

    It means only one thing to those of us of a certain age. It was the day of days, the event of our national lives. That it no longer is the focus of every succeeding November 22 tells us that one day even September 11 will pass without substantial notice. Yet whether cable television devotes every moment to reliving a national nightmare, its importance remains the same and, as Mad Men showed so well a few weeks back, any recollection of that day can trigger many floods, even among those who, unlike some of us, were very, very young that day.

    Yes, I was called up short when Mad men’s creator, Matt Weiner, mentioned that not everyone knows that Oswald was murdered only a few days after the President was killed, since there is no American who was over five years old at the time who doesn’t remember that and the sense, at that very minute, that we had spun completely out of control exactly as Mad Men reminded us.

    And, yes, Mad Men was also right in the sense that the world just ended that day and began again, with different values, different history, and different rules. The guilt and sadness over the death of our young President resulted, it is true, in the seminal legislation of our time, the Civil and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, respectively, and medicaid and medicare also in 1965. But the spirit of the era was gone and gone, it seemed, forever.

    Ask not what your country can do for you: ask what you can do for your country.

    That sense of obligation to our fellow citizens, the articulation of the underpinning of Roosevelt’s New Deal but now in the hands of

    a new generation of Americans — born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world

    President Kennedy’s death marked the end of an era, not the beginning he had promised us and his hopeful ideals for the country were replaced, first, by the war in Vietnam, followed by the war on the Great Society and then of the New Deal itself. The election of President Obama is the first thing that has happened since then which provides even a hint that we can get back on the path President Kennedy set for us.

    But as much as Matt Weiner offered a reminder of how many people have no recollection of November 22, 1963, a diary on Daily Kos the other day shows that the path to darkness remains before us as well. We live in a time when a person with a Jewish sounding last name who blogs about the limits of Sarah Palin’s appeal receives an email about “Why People Like to Stuff People Like You into Ovens.” This is the combustible atmosphere that existed in 1963. Deny that at your own peril.

    The diarist advised that we not fear the people who are out there—the “crazies” as Regina Spektor calls them—and that advice is worth trying to heed, but it will not be easy.

    Over and over the reminders take over this space.

    We are living in a time when a doctor providing abortions is murdered and people cheer or try to justify it.

    We are living in a time when elected officials can appear on Meet the Press and justify threats of violence and even the overthrow of our government and are not hooted into an apology or oblivion.

    We live in a time when a man proudly brags about the gun he brought to a rally where the President of the United States was speaking and yet this incident gets less coverage than whether some guy tried to hoodwink cable tv (big woop) by claiming his boy was in a balloon.

    We live in a time when people are “praying” for the President of the United States hoping for his death.

    We live among hate.

    Hate cost us a president and almost two generations of progress. It is countenanced today by people who should know better and there appear to be nobody or very few in the Republican Party willing to speak out against it, the way the otherwise racist William F. Buckley did against the John Birch Society
    or even Sen Prescott Bush spoke out against, tepidly, the “methods” used by Senator Joseph McCarthy in his anti-Communist crusades.

    Part of this day, as every November 22 since 1963, will be spent mourning our late President, but the day should also be dedicated to never allowing this hatred to change our world again.

     

    Comments

    COMBUSTION. First time I saw that Email. And good Meet the Press transcript.

    Dick Armey straight out lying and Rachel catches him!

    I just reviewed statistics on gun deaths in this country.

    This latest tragedy is not some isolated incident at all. Soon our national politicians will all be traveling in Popemobiles and appearing at rallies on computer screens.

    The right will not stop. They make too much money upping the ante on combustion.


    by Richard Day on Sun, 01/09/2011 - 3:01pm

    It was, I am sure to her, too, Rachel's finest moment.  Gregory was trying to suck his thumb while all this was going on, but could not find it,


    by Barth on Sun, 01/09/2011 - 3:45pm

    I am curious no word about the motives for the shooting has yet emerged...more importantly, the political background that drove the action. The silence adds to speculation which is slowly working itself up. On one hand, many people including myself, look at the past political rhetoric and assign guilt by association...his actions mirror the rhetoric. On the other hand, the right are lawyering up, so to speak, by claiming the shooter a deranged liberal...as if only liberals would pack a weapon at a political event. And the past political rhetoric has no bearing...note Palin claiming her use of crosshairs were surveyor map points, not a rifle crosshairs. When they start to inform the public as to the motives behind the shooters rationale it will come in direct conflict with preconceived opinions that have had the time to hardened like concrete.

    My question is relevant simply because the unanswered questions leads to the hardened misunderstanding between the Democrats and Republicnas. The more time a problem is allowed to fester, the more each side will justify their understanding using whatever info, past or present, that is available and can be modified to fit the puzzle their are making of the event. And when the truth emerges and it doesn't fit the matrix the public has erected there will be hostile reactions to both the authority that issues the info as well as to the political opposition as if they had their hands in on the decision process. It's the silence that is the accelerant of hostility that rules the political landscape nowadays. We see it with Democrats failing to go toe-to-toe with Republicans which makes their base angry and leads to hostile reactions, like refusing to vote as a form of protest.


    by Beetlejuice on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 12:43am

    Let's not get too conspiratorial, ok?  It is somehwat difficult to determine a motive when the shooter does not want to discuss it, preferring to speak to an attorney instead.  The evidence outside of that, e.g., http://motherjones.com/transition/inter.php?dest=http://motherjones.com/..., is somewhat equivocal.  That we are dealing with someone with issues of mental instability or worse, seems llikely.  As Sheriff Dupnik has discussed, though, that the shooter might be crazy does not absolve those whose incendiary rhetoric makes "second amendment remedies" sound like it is okay.  Since we decided to "de-institutionalize" the mentally challeneged (it is cheaper to do that, in theory and, of course, lower taxes is more important than anything else these days) are out there, and they listen to things that the rest of us may not hear the same way.

    My post was meant to make this point, now more relevant than ever.  It is that talk like this, often leads to things such as what happened Saturday.  At the same time, we can control our own vitriol, too. 

    For instance, nobody can seriously contend that Gov Palin was advocating that Congresswoman Giffords or anyone else should be murdered.  Her staff's obliviousness to what message they conveyed is far more serious, however, as is the blithe dismissal of all of this as having no bearing on whether a mentally challenged person might be encouraged to do something beyond ranting.

    I also do not think Sharron Angle was intending to incite violence by here reference to "Second Amendment remedies."  She is a simpleton, with an inadequate ability to express herself, who said something without knowing what she meant.

    That either one of these people could be put forward as a serious political candidate, Gov Palin to be Vice President of the United States for crying out loud, says more than anything how low our political system has sunk.

    There are people who post on Daily Kos, though,  who called Secretary Clinton horrible names, and described her as a "war criminal" when she ran for president.  I said then and repeat now that this is scurrilous, excessive and scary talk, but none of it amounts to what we have seen from the other side.

    When a major figure on television refers to a doctor who performs legal abortions as "Tiller the killer" and Dr. Tiller is murdered, it is asinine to chalk that up exclusively or even primarily to the mental illness of the shooter.  

    When people are "praying" for the death of the President of the United States, and are not roundly condemned by those who generally oppose that president's policies, we have crossed a line that can not be ignored by pointing to the mental instability of someone who does what happened on Saturday.  Yes, it was wrong for people to cheer when someone threw a shoe at President Bush, but these are not offsetting penalties.

    If there are people from this community that have made threats against politicians who disagree with them, they should be outed and condemned.  I would like to hear about them, though.


    by Barth on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 2:27pm