1960s shootings echo through the years

Randi Kreiss

If you lived through the assassinations of President Kennedy, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, then your heart and soul have been etched by public tragedy. Last week, that anxious, pit-in-the-stomach feeling grabbed hold when U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others were shot down by a gunman at a political rally in Tucson. Six, including a 9-year-old girl, were killed. Giffords remains in serious condition.

Those of us who were in our teens when JFK was killed were imprinted by the shocking violence and sadness of those days. At a tender age we were immersed in a new culture of public grief and loss. We were changed by the experience; chastened and made hyper-vigilant to electricity in the air. We notice when public discourse and the political atmosphere become supercharged.

I agree with commentators who said last week that the Arizona shootings had a sense of inevitability. During the months and years of President Obama’s run for office and his tenure in the White House, the political environment has become tense and angry, scored by hatred and infused with racism. The e-mails and blogs that have pumped lies into our lives are not nothing.

The emergence of “birthers,” who refuse to believe that the president is an American citizen despite irrefutable proof, matters. Tea Party members, who embrace the “locked and loaded” rhetoric of some of their leaders, matter. When a congressman, listening to the president’s speech during a full session of Congress, shouts out, “You lie!” it matters.

The man who pulled the trigger last week may or may not be insane, but my sense is that he did not act in a vacuum. If he hadn’t been pushed over the edge, someone else would have been. If we don’t change the tone of the way we speak to one another, this will not be the last political violence we witness.