The OK Corral on Your Corner

(By American Zen’s Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

Ask yourself, why does the left always want to politicize a tragedy. Watch the video of the AZ sheriff at his news conf. He can't wait to push the left's line that the tea party and Sarah were responsible. People were shot and killed and he's pushing left wing propaganda. - Linda Jean Burkett, Sarah Palin Facebook friend

Sarah, I see many from the left trying to spin this tragic event in an effort to forward their agenda. - Herb Riechmann, another Sarah Palin Facebook friend

(T)hey are feeding lies from other liberals. Obama supporters Shocker surprise. I dont see them pointing fingers at obama saying that he did this to the family. - Abi Mensah, yet another Sarah Palin Facebook friend

Thank you for being who you are, a true American. The fact that the tragedy in Arizona immediately drew the left's focus to you is further proof that you scare them silly. - Bob Gomola, yet another Sarah Palin Facebook friend

This is all so sad...but you know...somehow I have a feeling this also will get blamed on George Bush. - Warren Smith, yet another Sarah Palin Facebook friend

Just watch the Bama koolaid flow like water because the Liberal lunatics are already out in full force!

1. Already speaking again against guns in society. They try to take every opportunity to take your right to self defense. - Andy VanMiddlesworth, yet another Sarah Palin Facebook friend

More than anything else, This killer was a product of LIBERALISM. When a society for DECADES has been taught there are NO RIGHTS or WRONGS......If it feels good...DO IT !!! When parents no longer can discipline their children, when MURDER, MAYHEM, DRUGS, SEX, and VIOLENCE are promoted in video games and nearly every television program children see and the filthy music they listen to.... IS IT ANY WONDER, this is the outcome ??? - Phil Johnson, yet another Sarah Palin Facebook friend

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=248829 here it is, the guy was a left wing loon - David Otero, and yet another Sarah Palin Facebook friend (World Nut Daily claims Mein Kampf was Loughner’s favorite book, thereby proof of him being a liberal.).

If a thinking person takes a look at Sarah Palin’s friends’ comments on her latest Facebook balcony communiqué, one will come to the regrettable conclusion that we have learned nothing and never will. As this very tiny sample from Palin’s friends proves, ignorance still reigns supreme, the misguided finger-pointing has long since commenced, the sanctity of the 2nd Amendment is once again invoked, and, most ironically, the left wing is accused by the right wing of politicizing yesterday’s shooting in Tuscon.

World Nut Daily has already weighed in, plucking Karl Marx’s Manifesto out of thin air, assigning it to alleged shooter Jared Lee Loughner’s preferred reading list, as well as Hitler’s Mein Kampf, itself a manifesto for modern day right wing extremist politics. If we’ve learned any one single thing through this tragic shooting that has thus far claimed six lives, including that of a federal judge (John Roll, a George HW Bush appointee), a congressional staffer and a little girl of nine, it’s a mere affirmation of the right wing mindset that makes accepting culpability, even in a vague collective sense, utterly impossible.

This was most perfectly and immediately delineated by Sarah Palin or her people removing within hours of the shooting a now-infamous picture of 20 Democratic districts personally and literally targeted by Palin before posting her ignorant and unedited Facebook message expressing condolences to the Giffords family. Part and parcel to right wing thinking, the first thought that came to Palin’s mind was not nonpartisan sympathy and support for all families involved but political damage control.

There may be some who will take me to task for making similar inflammatory remarks about right wingers, in particular those about Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Hal Turner and other violence-fomenting hate merchants for whom business these days is very brisk. Fine. You’re entitled to your opinion as are we all. Yet if we don’t continue to identify, isolate and rectify the hate speech that has already been stained with human blood almost more times than we can count, if we don’t point a righteous finger at those directly responsible, nothing will be learned and we will merely continue to devolve and descend further and further into more of a violent, paranoid police state than we already have.

And while some politicians will put on a brave front and say that Saturday’s shooting in Tucson will have no effect on their level of contact with their constituents, it’s impossible to see how this heinous act will have anything but a chilling effect on lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who may have shared Congresswoman’s Gifford’s passion for open air town halls such as her Congress on Your Corner. If the lockdown on our nation’s airports and the circumvention of our civil liberties resulting from a failed terrorist attack two Christmases ago is any indication, Congress has effectively been put out of the reach of those who would seek to peacefully assemble and interact with their elected officials.

In her latest televised appearance, Congresswoman Gifford was given last Wednesday the honor of reading part of the first amendment aloud, especially the part about free speech and the right to peaceful assembly. Ironically, the congresswoman’s desire to peacefully assemble with her constituents in Arizona’s 8th congressional district, and the free speech clause that’s regularly perverted by the likes of Palin, Sharron Angle, Glenn Beck and so many others is what nearly put her on a slab at the morgue.

When people like Jared Lee Loughner, a typical, incoherent right winger spouting conspiracy theories about the government controlling grammar (something George Lakeoff and Frank Luntz can talk all day about) and wanting to go back to the gold standard, attack public officials and ordinary citizens with automatic weapons, they’re not just attacking people: They’re attacking and weakening the Constitution and the liberties that it strives to give us.

Every time some conspiracy theorist takes whatever Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Hal Turner says to heart and construe them literally and turn friendly Town Halls on beautiful sunny days into the gunfight at the OK Corral, they subtract from the rights they ignorantly claim left wingers are trying to take away from them (principally the oft-misconstrued and irrelevant 2nd amendment).

Sheriff Clarence Dupnik of Pima County Arizona put it best when he said that Arizona is “becoming the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry” and when he said that mentally unbalanced people like Jared Lee Loughner are “susceptible to vitriol.” But Palin’s supporters had already rallied around her even as she was taking down that target map that included Rep. Gifford’s district because they know she is responsible. And they have nothing with which to respond but more ignorance and hatred that helped spawn this act that has already claimed half a dozen lives.

Even after Bill O’Reilly’s countless jeremiads against “Baby Killer Tiller” resulting in the death of Dr. George Tiller, even after Glenn Beck’s obsessive jeremiads against the Tides Foundation resulted in a fan of Beck’s getting pulled by the California Highway Patrol just in time to stop a bloodbath, even after Palin and Jesse Kelly resorting to calls for armed insurrection and imagery resulted in the deaths of six people, the wounding of 13 others, including a sitting congresswoman, we, or rather, the right wing, have learned nothing.

Yes, Sarah Palin is directly responsible for this (if her immediate Orwellian damage control is any indication) as is Gifford’s Republican opponent Jesse Kelly and every right wing lunatic who gives their tacit consent for “2nd Amendment remedies.” None of these people will be held accountable by the proper authorities or repudiated by those above them and far less by those below them. And until we realize that yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater has sometimes mortal consequences, we will still have our toes in the primordial ooze from which our ancestors began to emerge millions of years ago.