Arizona: State of fear
By Max J. Castro
majcastro@gnail.com
As of this writing (late on the evening of Sunday, January 9th) there is much that we don’t yet know about Saturday’s assassination attempt against U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and the horrific massacre that ensued. The murderous rampage left six people dead, including a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl. Fourteen others were wounded in the attack, which took place outside a Tucson (Arizona) Safeway supermarket during an event convened by Representative Giffords in order to visit with constituents in her district.
Although the investigation now underway by local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies is in its early stages, there are some things we already know about the presumed perpetrator of the crime, identified as twenty-two year old Jared Lee Loughner, as well as the context in which the murders took place.
By all accounts Loughner, a former Pima Community College student who was suspended from the institution because of repeated bouts of odd and disruptive behavior, is a severely disturbed individual who suffers from delusions, paranoia, confused thinking, and other symptoms of schizophrenia. The typical age of onset of the disease is during the late teens or early twenties.
While Loughner may well be suffering from a serious psychiatric illness, this was no wild, random or impulsive shooting. Handwritten notes on an envelope found in a safe in the home that Loughner shares with his parents state that “I planned ahead” to carry out “my assassination” with a specific target in mind: “Giffords.” Another indication of premeditation is the fact that the suspect bought the semiautomatic Glock pistol used in the shooting on Nov. 30, five weeks before the killings.
Beyond Loughner’s state of mind — and irrespective of the specific motive that may or may not be discovered in the course of the investigation — a climate of fear, anger, and aggression has been building up in this country since about the time Barack Obama became a serious contender for the presidency. Arizona, a border state that for years has been sending a hostile message to its Latino population through voter initiatives to punish employers who hire undocumented workers and by banning bilingual education, has expressed more than its share of rage.
Obama’s success, first in winning the presidency and then in passing federal legislation long-sought by liberal Democrats (albeit frequently watered down significantly in a mostly vain attempt to obtain Republican support), especially health care reform, only fed the outrage of a dwindling but still significant slice of the population: whites with less than a college education. In Arizona specifically, health care reform was a big source of ire for the kind of Tea Party Republican that Gabrielle Giffords beat in the November election.
Giffords’s vote for Obama’s health care legislation made her the target of numerous threats and slurs. After the law was approved, the glass in the Congresswoman’s Arizona office windows and doors was smashed to smithereens. The vandals were probably unaware of the perverse irony of their actions as they went about staging their own Arizona-style Krystallnacht upon the office of a Jewish member of Congress. Giffords also opposed the infamous anti-immigrant law (SB 1070), a law that was so popular among Arizonans that it singlehandedly propelled the spectacularly inept Jan Brewer to victory in the race for governor.
We may never know the extent to which the witches’ brew of bile and vitriol emanating in large doses from the mouths of demagogic politicians and the rabid talkers like the Glenn Becks and the Rush Limbaughs of this nation contributed to the tragedy in Tucson. What is almost certain is that this country will never find its way again as long as the politics of unreason play such a large role in the national conversation.
