What better way to post for the first time in 2011 then right in the middle of a media frenzy/national tragedy?!
And so the speculation train has begun!
SARAH PALIN SHOT A BUNCH OF PEOPLE, INCLUDING A LIBERAL DEMOCRAT, IN ARIZONA TODAY!!!
Now, that is a baseless accusation if I ever saw one. Completely based on so many jumped to conclusions that it literally makes my head spin. Now, it is obvious that someone else did the shooting and, at this point in time, it is not obvious why the "suspect" did do the shooting this morning. What is obvious to this sometimes blogger/pretend journalist/opinionated-doofus-with-an-internet-connection is that the media has not had a nation wide tragedy to jump all over for the rest of the weekend, if not the month, in quite a while.
It's exciting, as my better half pointed out to me this afternoon, I am addicted to this kind of thing. It's the kind of thing that got me interested in "politics" in the first place and it's the kind of thing that has partially dragged me away from it some in the last year or two as well. Particularly, the spectacle of it all folks seem so lost and unable to account for any facts and it is always bizarrely intriguing (and disheartening) to watch as the live TV people try and assemble a chaotic "happening" on the air while attempting to remain coherent and (in their minds) non-biased and fact based and so forth. In just the first hour of coverage it was announced that Gabrielle Giffords had died, was in surgery fighting for her life, had died again, was moving on the stretcher at the scene, and was dead along with 5, no 6, maybe 12 other people...Including a federal judge who was at the event, happened to be shopping at the Safeway and a 9 year old child (the biggest tragedy, if true, of the day). For myself, the distant, uninvolved, dispassionate layperson watching on TV...endlessly entertaining.
2010 was a rough year for politics and it tried my very last patience. While the Tea party did provide me with a lot of laughs I explored in posts in the past spring, it did sadden me to see such a blatant wave of pure ignorant stupidity take hold in a significant percentage of the populace yet again. Not surprising, just sad. That combined with my general disillusion with the direction the administration was predictably heading lead me to put down the Bob Woodward and pick up a Star Wars expanded universe fantasy series for the old reading list. I had thought too much and too hard about this shit in the past and needed to let go a little bit. I say a little bit because once you are in, you are in, and I still followed along with some of my favorite bloggers and kept a finger on the pulse just in case something big happens...Like say a confusing attack, assassination attempt that will so muddy the waters for the first part of this year.
A year from now when we are casually watching the year that was 2011 on whatever TV station/website/news entity du jour we will be reminded of how the year begun with 15 to 20 shots fired in Arizona. Likely, by then, we will have been past the resolution of this case. We may know the whys when it comes to Jared Loghner (a dreamer who knows what the his new currency is?); is he just a whack job? Is he a part of the Tea Party? Was he inspired by the Sarah Palin bullshit I posted at the top of this page? These are things that interest me most at the moment.
The rest will be an endless well of "lets see what happens..." as I wager the NRA will have a convention soon in Tuscon. I bet there will be TONS of talk about more security for government officials. Some of those officials will be afraid and some will be brave and still do all their public constituent meetings. I bet at least one of them will be armed, openly and a bullshit-a-palooza will begin then. The "health care issue" will be heavily involved in all sorts of ways. The angered political environment, high emotion, threatening notions, and the general stirred up-ness of the "far right" will be sited ad nausea. Immediately followed by numerous retorts about the "far left" and their apparently similar awful "attacks/radical actions." And who knows what other issues, events and what not will be derived/inspired by this heinous act!? By summer it's probable that few will care anymore.
The one thing I would like to see...Perhaps wish for? A calming down of the rhetoric. It would be neat if this served as a teachable moment for those in politics on any side that flapping their gums like assholes, listening to/encouraging violent rhetoric and those that spew it, and continuing the useless atmosphere of conflict, division and "us vs. them" mentalities all underscored by disgusting, unabated greed...That it's time to evolve to the civilized society we pretend we are. This is horrible for the victims and victims families and as of this writing the Congresswoman is alive and apparently may live through this. Hopefully, she will be the voice to lead this fantastical, fair and fresh discussion I am alluding to here.
That's a nice thought but will it happen? Unfucking likely. Next week will see a lot of bullshit posturing as radical, Tea Party types politely pretend they never would or did condone this sort of behavior and use the term, "whack job" a lot. The NRA will probably have a gun rally in the same parking lot the shooting happened and resurrect the body of Charlton Heston and demonstrate that even after 3 and half years in the grave they still can't pry his gun from his cold, dead hand. Couple of months and this will blow by and the right and left will be at it again over whatever ridiculous, horrible kerfluffle we have to watch the media endlessly patter on about.
But whatever, I am just speculating and fantasizing just like them, I am no better.
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2011!!!
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