Rhetoric of violence corrodes entire political culture

In the aftermath of the shooting in Tucson, a lot has been inevitably been written about the vitriolic rhetoric of politics.

Blame has been laid on prominent Right-wing commentators such as Sarah Palin and her gun analogies, Rush Limbaugh and his demeaning smears, and Glenn Beck and his rants.

The political Right, of course, points accusingly at commentators on the Left.

The problem is much greater than either side would have us believe. The whole political establishment and the mainstream media are equally culpable for their own day-to-day rhetorical choices.

And we, the people, have become inured to them.

Without blinking, all political campaigns, Right, Left and everything in between, refer to (and the media blindly accept and transmit) “targeted audiences,” “war chests,” “the air wars” (TV ad campaigns), “sabotaging,” “counter-attacking,” “burying,” “sniping,” “war rooms,” “political bombshells,” "political cross hairs," and “ground troops.”

The list goes on and on.

Face it, much of American politics is defined by words of violence and war.

The unquestioning use and acceptance of such terms corrode our political culture.

Worse, the use of such words only increases the likelihood of terrible deeds like the shootings in Tucson.

Jumping before it's too late

We’ve seen riots and demonstrations by students in Britain and in France but why not here?

Could we have an example of an American frog being slowly cooked in a pot whose water is gradually getting hotter?

You know the story. If the frog is thrown into boiling water, it jumps out. That’s what’s happening in Europe where there’s been a sudden shock of severe government austerity measures.

But in this country, the socio-economic water temperature has been rising ever so slowly for years. The increases in tuition have risen steadily for 25 years but have relentlessly far outpaced inflation. Likewise health care costs.

Likewise the slow but steady growth in the gap between rich and poor. Likewise consumer debt. Likewise the stagnation in the middle class. Likewise the decline in our schools. Our federal deficit as been building and growing for more than a decade.

The other reason young American frogs aren’t jumping around in anger is that they enthusiastically elected a president perceived to be a cool, rational progressive. The Obama presidency is not seen as “hot” waters, unlike the two terms of Bush/Cheney.

If there was an American jolt, it happened nine years ago on 9/11. After that, everything else was part of a national, irrational response. Talk about jumping around!

Because America has no draft, young Americans, particularly college students, took little or no action. Sure there were marches and demonstrations but with time that energy was defused and re-directed into politics (“The Politics of Hope” "Change We can Believe in!") and away from the streets.

As unemployment grows, the jobless have reason to be grateful for war. The military is this nation’s employer of last resort. Seen in this way, war is a our “healthiest” economic sector. And the military-industrial-financial-media ruling class is thriving while young, formerly unemployed Americans are “working” — and dying — far, far away.

The Obama administration simply transferred war from one dysfunctional nation to another. Opposition to the war in Afghanistan has been softened by the president’s very public hand wringing and media-staged, patriotic speeches to the hapless troops.

If there’s been a visible, angry reaction in this country, it has been that of the Tea Party. Tea Party activists have been suffering from sudden stove-top heat (unemployment, foreclosures, mounting debt) of the last three years, but they jumped into the hands of a pseudo-movement cynically financed by the very forces causing the anguish.

In short, the Tea Party-goers were duped, as they are now finding out. Did the Tea Party faithful really want to extend the tax cuts for the rich? Did they really want to help out the Wall Street flimflam artists who made this mess, reaped billions from it and then plowed a share of their winnings into the Fall’s Congressional campaigns — and the Tea Party?

Did the Tea Party followers really want to end unemployment benefits? Did they really want to drive up federal deficits?

With less than two years to the presidential election, my guess is that the energy that might otherwise show up in the streets will be siphoned into various political campaigns. The corporate media are already shaping the “horse race.” The political windbags and pundits are already grooming candidates. Soon they will be slowly paraded from the paddocks to the starting gates.

You can be sure bets are being placed.

Expect left and right wing “extremist” candidates to tap into rising, but well-contained political energy. Also expect the primaries to result in “extremist” presidential candidates’ losing to “stay the course” middle-of-the-roaders, presented as cool, rational, “trust us” leaders.

Read: Obama, Bloomberg and Romney.

Congress, on the other hand, will continue to be a countervailing, unmanageable zoo of conflicting, implacable, hard-line interests. But that’s another story.

As for the frogs in the pot, us, the heat — literal heat, if you consider global warming — will slowly, ever so slowly, continue to rise. Will we jump before it's too late? And where, exactly, where we land?

A "tetchy" letter from England

Richard Wood is an old friend of 40 years. He's also a Yorkshireman, which means he speaks his mind.

So it was that I opened my e-mail this morning to find this letter (below), which he himself describes as "tetchy."

You can sense his impatience (even anger) not only with America generally but with me in particular for my choice of subjects these past few days. He is accusing us of ignorant trivializing of this election's significance to the planet.

The rest of the world has about had it with the American electorate and this campaign. Richard doesn't even cite the worst of it. The attack ads, the voting machines that change your vote (go here), the voter suppression, the robo-calls, the transformation of politics into entertainment (Read "Amusing Ourselves to Death"), the racism, the hateful claques at the rallies.

There's a lot to get tetchy about.

Here is Richard's letter.

Are climate change, ecology, the environment, the immediate future of the physical planet itself issues at all with the American public?

In your three current posted stories - the disastrous local landslide, Cindy's dollars, and the debate by the would-be presidents, there is no hint of awareness that there are huge policy questions waiting to be answered.

The whole world is watching.

We don't care what the next president looks like, his sex appeal, whether he makes eye contact, how many zillion dollars his wife earns, how heroic or cowardly he was in Vietnam. We want to know if he is going to kick-start America's involvement in saving the planet. Does he (do you) make the link between natural disaster and climate change? Did a natural fault line create the landslide or was it the result of more than usually violent weather patterns? If the latter, are they related to what used to be called global warming?

Here in North Yorkshire we have had three successive relentlessly wet summers, as predicted by the climate change theorists. We have had massive flooding, with water pouring through the homes of thousands of people more than once each summer. Snow is a thing of the past. A whole generation of under-20s has grown up without ever seeing snow, in a county whose winters were once dominated by snow and ice.

There are climate change skeptics, but not many. Most people are now making uncomfortable shifts in the way they live, think and behave.

There are many, many great American scientists standing by for signals from the new American political leadership that the dark days of Bush ignorance are over, that your country is ready to play its part in combating man-induced climate change. You are the greatest users of non-renewable energy in the world. How willing is the new leadership going to be to wake the people up, get them started on massive changes in personal habits?

Does Obama mean what he says when he promises America will have cut off its dependence on Middle East oil within 10 years? Dare he and does he know how to go about this? What are his links with Al Gore; how prepared is he to listen to and learn from him?

Let's hear these questions asked loudly so that we know what these guys are truly made of.
Maybe the mesmerising line running across the TV screen during the next debate could reflect the responses of the political blog writers!