Yesterday Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot while meeting with her constituents at a local Costco. She was one of the twenty Democrats targeted in Sarah Palin's “Don't Retreat, Reload” ad that was shown on this site and just about every other site that has advertisers.
The shooter was mentally unstable and the teabaggers are trying to use that to show there was no connection between them and the shooting. They say how could they have known that calling for “Second Amendment Solutions” and placing a gun sight on a person would make an unstable person take them seriously.
In two of my books I dealt with a totalitarian state and had to research mind control so I learned a bit about what makes a tyrant think. It is basically the same techniques as a bully or a wife beater, and the escalation to violence is a feedback loop.
We've all heard the phrase, “If you stand up to bully, they'll back down.” This isn't really true in reality that will probably lead to a fight, however win or lose the bully will respect you and will stop bullying you and move on to someone else. If someone doesn't stand up the bully will begin to hate that person, really hate them, and blame the victim for all their problems. As long as this cycle continues it can only lead to one outcome greater violence.
Over the last two years the Democrats have backed down to the Republicans when it came to fighting for the middle class so that they would only fight for something if over 75% of the country wants it and even then they will compromise for the sake of “bipartisanship”. By bowing down to the Republicans it makes the Republicans hate them even more and the political bullying grows.
Before the shooting I was going to talk about how my Congressman Ben Chandler, a democrat who voted with the republicans on almost every issue, was rewarded by the Republicans by having them take away his seat on the House Spending Panel. This is the classic behavior of an abuser, if you enable them they are going to hate you and use that as excuse to abuse you more.
This is also what happened on Healthcare Reform. 75% of people wanted at least the Public Option. Obama and the Democrats looked for a preemptive compromise with the Republicans and the Democrats surrendering on this issue made them hate the Democrats leading them to use the violent rhetoric in opposition. If the Democrats had stuck to their guns on this the response of the Republicans as the abusers would actually have been more civil.
By enabling the Republicans to be bullies and abusers the Republicans didn't gain respect for the Democrats letting them participate in the legislation, it made them hate the Democrats more. This lead to more and more hateful rhetoric leading to an unstable person taking in all the hate and vile that was spewed out across the airwaves and going on a shooting spree.
So instead of doing my usual closing line, I will offer a bit of advise to everyone especially the Blue Dogs in Congress. Fight the good fight and stand up for what you believe in. It would seem like making nice and reaching out to your opponent would be a path towards civil discussion but the Republicans are not being rational people at this point, they have fallen into the abusers mentality. If you reach out to them, they will hate you. The only way to stop this escalating hatred is to stand firm, win or lose if you fight the abuser he will hate you less.
By Darrell B. Nelson author of Alien Thoughts
