<apolitical>
I was just at her office. There's hundreds of people there with candles. Nobody talked very much. Even the media people were somber - like they were still working through their own sadness, rather than just working. I took some photos (I'm a pretty avid photographer, just ask the DP'09 guys). It was ... I dunno. Nice. And sad. Deeply sad.
</apolitical>
Preface to the political: I'm not interested in talking about your political beliefs, I'm talking about tone and a lack clear political reasoning.
<political>
As far as the assassin's politics go... he wasn't liberal, nor conservative. He was insane, and you can't ascribe any particular ideology to that, but he
did absorb one thing: Hate.
Those whose profession is essentially to disagree with liberals (talk show hosts, politicians, et al.) are going to complain that the acts of one crazy person can't be blamed on their rhetoric. They are wrong.
Leaders and public speakers must speak in a manner that recognizes that some of their constituents and listeners are insane. This is why
Alan Grayson didn't belong in Congress. Rhetoric that pointlessly or inaccurately uses words like target, traitor, Marxist, etc., empowers the deranged. The Democrats' constituents had their share of Bush hatred back in the day, but it was confined to the margins because liberal leaders did not accuse him of being an "
enemy of humanity" or "
using Second Amendment remedies." As
George Packer put it:
"Instead of 'soft on defense,' one routinely hears the words 'treason' and 'traitor.' The President isn't a big-government liberal—he's a socialist who wants to impose tyranny [...] This relentlessly hostile rhetoric has become standard issue on the right. (On the left it appears in anonymous comment threads, not congressional speeches and national T.V. programs.)"
Andrew Sullivan
put it better than I could:
"When you put a politician in literal cross-hairs, when you call her a target, when you celebrate how many targets you have hit, when you go on national television and shoot guns, when you use the language of "lock and load" to describe disagreements over healthcare provision ... you are part of the problem."
</political>
