Get 'em up against the wall.
There's one in the spotlight, he don't look right to me
Get 'im up against the wall.
That one looks Jewish,
And that one's a coon.
Who let all of this riff raff into the room?
There's one smoking a joint,
And another with spots,
If I had my way
I'd have all of you shot."
- Roger Waters
"In the Flesh" 1979
In the wake of a senseless tragedy, human reaction comes swiftly and passionately and is fueled by the empathy we feel for the ones we love. In the days following the politically motivated shootings in Tucson, Arizona, photos of nine-year-old shooting victim Christina Green have surfaced on the internet. Articles relating her aspirations and her family's grief are now burned into the public's consciousness. We find ourselves pressed to make sense of the senselessness; an almost impossible task made even more difficult by our political convictions. Since the shootings, Sarah Palin and her Tea Party have come under fire for being the inspiration for the crime. The Sarah Palin Action Committee website published a photo with crosshair icons covering cities where Republicans hoped to win congressional seats in the 2010 elections; Tucson, Arizona was one of the cities. Palin's "lock n load" rhetoric is also a source of contention for armchair activists looking to crucify her and The Tea Party for "encouraging these imbalanced and violent people to take action" (Walker, 2011). I personally find The Tea Party's rhetoric detestable, but when we begin a campaign to censor the passions of people who are fighting for political and social changes, we become the fascists' greatest allies; we are advocating censorship. Insisting that a watchdog could have prevented this tragedy by ordering The Tea party to tone down their campaign is another blow to civil liberty. I can't subscribe to the idea that The Tea Party is directly or indirectly responsible for the Tucson shooting any more than I can subscribe to the idea the Judas Priest is responsible for kids killing themselves, and I find the victimization of the shooter to be a vulgar obstruction of social responsibility and critical thinking: a smokescreen, if you will, to skirt the issue of human injustice in order to start a political war.
I find it bewildering that so many Americans are shifting the focus from tragedy to politics by confusing figurative language as a call to murder. Are Americans so undereducated and under-read that they are disabled from understanding when language is being used figuratively? I understand that some folks may have difficulty identifying when a crosshair is being used symbolically, but the suggestion that all Americans are in danger of making irrational choices because public figures like Sarah Palin are god-like and speak with ultimate authority over their constituents is frightening. The idea that American citizens are susceptible to corruption because of an ill advised campaign slogan is asinine. The only exceptions are the sick individuals who do mistake political rhetoric as gospel truth, and I do not wish to be part of a society where the rules of the game are changed for sick minds. Most disturbing about the public outcry is this: the idea that the shooter is a victim and not an agent who acted by his own free will.
To suggest The Tea Party advocated murder because of their campaign tactics is to put our own individual means of expression on the chopping block. From our bumper stickers to our bibles, our right to passionately express ourselves is in danger of becoming an implication in someone else's irrational crime. I love my Dodge truck, yet I've never felt the compulsion to vandalize another's vehicle just because I saw a sticker depicting the cartoon character Calvin pissing on the logo of another automobile manufacturer, and if I did so something destructive to someone else's property, I can hardly believe that a sticker would indicate the automaker as advocating vandalism. I have also never been fired upon by a driver whose bumper sticker encouraged me to keep honking while they were reloading (of course I honked, just to be an asshole.) These are minor examples of self expression, but corruptors infiltrate society at its most simplistic level and work their way up the ladder, and once a precedent is set, the doors to tyranny are blown open.
One of the beautiful things about living in America is the freedom to express not only how you feel, but how strongly you feel about it. Unfortunately, there are some who would like you to believe that no American is discerning enough to understand parody and satire without knowledge of the words "parody" and "satire." Consider the lyrics which open this essay; I've been listening to Pink Floyd The Wall for 30 years, yet I've never murdered a homosexual or person whose ethnicity was different than mine. Although this portion of The Wall is satirical, I didn't know what satire was when I was nine, but I thought a lot about what those lyrics could have possibly meant before I truly understood them. It seemed far more irrational to me to hate people because of the lyrics to the song than to think about why those lyrics existed. I've matured to be a tolerant, non-violent adult, and I think most Americans would laugh at the idea of Roger Waters being accountable for any brutality against minorities since 1979, and there are far more people who continue to listen to his records than Sarah Palin's rhetoric.
The Tucson shooting was a violent crime and because the image of a slain little girl is etched into our memory, we long for closure. For most of us, closure can only come when justice is served, and because the weight of this crime is enormous, the apprehension and eventual conviction of one man does not satisfy our need to satisfy ourselves that evil has been thwarted, therefore, we blame. Placing blame is an activity in which every American participates, and the way they place their blame is largely influenced by what they've been taught. Consider education in this country and in the countries of our European allies; Since the Second World War, the emphasis of education has been on competition and production. Roger Waters criticized post war education in Europe. In "Not Now John," from the album The Final Cut (1983), he writes:
"Gotta compete with the wily Japanese / No need to worry about the Veitnamese / Gotta bring the Russian Bear to his knees / or maybe not the Russian Bear, maybe the Swedes / We showed Argentina, now let's go and show these / Make us feel tough and wouldn't Maggie be pleased?"
(Maggie is a reference to Margaret Thatcher.) Roger Waters is not an advocate of war. There has been little emphasis placed on critical thinking and problem solving in American education, and the result is the world which we have made. We produce and consume, we take our daily dose of entertainment news media to satisfy our need to know something, anything; and we blame who we've been taught to hate. Not much can be done about this in the present, but by looking to the future, I believe that great social change can come about through education which encourages people how and why to think, and not what to think.
Censorship already prevails in our educational institutions. You are not likely to find many history textbooks containing the information that scalping was an invention of the white man, and in Texas, they've considering referring to slavery as "Atlantic triangular trade" (Paulson, 2010). The novels I use in my classroom are an invaluable resource for critical thinking and problem solving: social, political, psychological, spiritual and so forth. At the moment I write this, there is an uproar in the literary community over the politically correct rewrite of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and rightfully so; this book illustrates the struggles of class and race the way a history textbook never could, because it is more honest. Some people find honesty offensive, and I find censorship to be the most evil form of bigotry. To erase or dumb-down the embarrassing part of our history is an injustice to those who were part of the struggle. If slavery is not to be mentioned, and all racial slurs are deleted from novels and stories, there are no more stories to tell, except lies.
Ultimately, what I am saying is this; America, pick your battles, but before you do, make sure you understand what it is you are fighting and what the repercussions of the fighting will be, and if the repercussions and changes it brings will be long term or short term. Right now, we need a long term solution to exploitation by political means, and I believe the solution lies within education, and I am choosing to fight that fight. As for Palin and The Tea Party, it is enough for me to call them "a bunch of assholic morons." I felt this way before the shooting, and I continue to feel this way after the shooting, and I am inclined to call said party insensitive for, as of yet, not issuing an apology for offending some people. I say some people because obviously not everyone finds their rhetoric offensive. Still, apologizing to those who do find it offensive shows class, dignity and sensitivity: The Tea Party obviously lacks these, yet I cannot call them murderers, nor can I expect them to apologize for being partly responsible for the murders, because that is ludicrous. The shooter is responsible. The idea that the shooter is a victim who fell prey to the depraved words of monsters, and though as a liberal I am inclined to call them monsters, they are people: politicians with an agenda to change America, is to exploit a tragedy for political gain. And whether or not I agree with their call for changes, I cannot bring myself to blame a political machine for a demented individual's choices.
Works Cited
Paulson, Amanda. "Texas Textbook War: 'Slavery' or 'Atlantic Triangular Trade'? - CSMonitor.com." The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com. Web. 10 Jan. 2011.
Sarah Palin's Official PAC | SarahPAC - Sarah Palin's Official PAC. Web. 10 Jan. 2011.
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Walker, Denova. "Giffords Shooting Is Life in the Era of Lock-and-Load Politics « SpeakEasy." SoapBox. Web. 10 Jan. 2011.
Waters, Roger. In the Flesh. Columbia, 1979. CD.
Waters, Roger. Not Now John. Columbia, 1983. CD.
