On the recent shootings; a modest proposal

[catsittingstill]

By now you all know about Gabrielle Giffords and about 19 other people being shot, and eight of them killed, including a 9 year old girl.

Conservative hate speech is already spinning as hard as it can--this was a random nut job and suggesting that jokes about killing liberals or Democrats contributed to it in any way is heartlessly making political hay out of random violence.  

Whatever.  

Speaking as someone whose church was attacked a few years ago by a "random nut job" coincidentally partaking of a lot of hate mongering put out by those of a particular political persuasion, I have a modest proposal.

Let's come down hard (Verbally--passing a law against any kind of speech is not the way to go.  You let the rattlesnakes rattle--it's how you realize where they are.) on anyone who "jokes" about using violence to settle political issues. Let's make a tidal wave of free speech calling out hatred and incitement of violence crash down on anyone, of any political persuasion, who, to pick a random example, prints pictures of political districts with rifle cross hairs (surveyor's transit, my ass) on them.

Call it what it is--winding up nut jobs with easy access to guns and pointing them at their opponents.

I will make no secret of my thought that only one side is going to have to abandon a significant chunk of their political rhetoric over this.

But anyone--liberal or conservative, Democratic or Republican--placed at the slightest disadvantage by the new custom deserves to be at a disadvantage.

What do you think?

Comments

[keris]

Certainly, and emphasis on 'anyone'. No privilege, no "private law", no special conjugation ("I joke, you make an inappropriate remark, he gets arrested for incitement to terrorism"), no matter who they are. (It could actually be argued that the higher they are in public view the worse they should fall -- if I say it then few people will listen but if a prominent politician does then it will affect many -- but better to keep it all equal.)

[mdlbear]

I think it's a great idea! Not sure it's likely to have any effect, but a great idea nonetheless.

It's like what Gandhi said when asked what he thought about Western civillization: "I think it would be a good idea."

[phillip2637.livejournal.com]

I would like that to happen and I would like it to be effective -- up here as well as in your country.

With what I've read in the past few days, I'm not sure what the campaign against violent imagery would do because I feel like I'm reading about aliens. More than the map thing, even, this one: "Jesse Kelly held fundraisers where he urged supporters to help remove Giffords from office by joining him to shoot a fully loaded M-16 rifle." The idea that someone would do that scares me. The fact that it wasn't instant political suicide makes me more cynical than usual. Are the supporters of someone like that going to change because of comment from non-gun-wielding critics?

(To answer my own question: I suppose it's better to try, regardless of strong odds against success.)

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

I'm with you.

[pondside.livejournal.com]

I'd certainly advocate trying. As one of the references recently was to a "tiller the killer" which didn't ring bells I did a bit of digging into that. I remember the assassination etc I'd just not heard that particular appellation before. What REALLY concerned me was all the yeah "good job" "lets kill em all" "strike one for God" type comments that were generated in the forums after he was killed.

I have difficulties with the eye for an eye philosophy whenever I hear it being rolled around. Muslims are bashed because "they have barbaric laws", see above. That mote in the eye is awfully large in "our" society.

When I hear or see something I disagree with, even very strongly I don't have the uncontrollable desire to grab a gun. If I still owned guns I wouldn't have that desire. That's not how you solve things in my little part of the universe. What frightens me is the growing realization that talking about doing that kind of thing and actually doing that kind of thing is not unthinkable for so so many others.

No, I don't believe that was a surveyors transit mark because that would only make sense if they were planning to knock them down and pave over them (or were they?). Did they stop teaching debate in schools and people fill the gap with mindless spewing of crap?

I know how to use a gun, I was a top marksman in pistol but I've spent too much time on the wrong side of one and don't want one in my home or my neighbourhood. I have a dear friend with years of training in the military, high level sniper of great skill. I have no problem with him owning a gun, rifle or arsenal because not only does he know how to safeguard them and use them, he knows when not to use them. I don't have those warm fuzzy feelings about the majority of the people on this planet.

Yeah. trash talk, hate talk, incitement and violence need to be squashed by each and every one of us. Not waiting for "the government" or the media or whoever. Don't pick up guns, speak up and say - No, it isn't right to talk like that. Phone radio stations and declare boycott against inflammatory radio hosts. Don't just not listen, tell the sponsors why!

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

I agree with you, Cat. The top way to deal with bullying in school is to LABEL it, and CONDEMN it verbally. Often, no other intervention is needed officially.

So, I think that LABELING hate speech as such, and CONDEMNING it will at least bring up awareness, and perhaps cause folks to think a bit more before they sound off, or mindlessly repeat someone else's yap.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

I've been calling it trolling for psychopaths, but your description is pithier.

I wish I believed your solution would work, but I do not see how. We've been doing it all along, after all, and had little effect. It might be more persuasive now, but there has already been so much violence.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I think two separate things:

1) While I'd love, as a Machiavellian politician, to believe that the right-wing rhetoric had a role in causing this particular shooting, I just can't make myself buy that it did. This man had a florid psychosis, a set of political beliefs ranging from hard-money to Marxism with no clear allegiance to any side of the American debate; he just wasn't that tied to reality; and a grudge against this particular politician which dates back three years, to a time well before Sarah Palin's crosshairs graphic went up or most of the other similar stuff was said. Not all, but most. I just can't make myself swallow the theory that the assorted political vitriol changed events in this specific case one way or the other.

2) I don't need to care about any of that to think, as I do, that it's long past time we dialed down the rhetoric because otherwise there will be other cases where it does set off unstable people and cause slaughter which could be avoided by keeping the tone of the debate, if not civil, at least nonviolent. I heartily approve your proposal and want to participate in it, and I can and do say that without thinking the rhetoric I want to use social and political pressure to force down several notches caused this particular massacre. If it didn't, it'll cause one sooner or later; waking up before it does is a good idea.