Until now I haven’t commented here about the atrocity in Tucson on January 8th. Aside from a couple of remarks on Twitter, I haven’t discussed it publicly at all. Like everybody else, I was horrified by the massacre. I’m amazed and glad that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has survived. I haven’t written about it because I wanted to clarify my thoughts, and I didn’t want to speak intemperately. And plenty of others have spoken about it. Some have spoken clearly, and movingly – I thought the president’s address at the Tucson memorial was presidential.
But in another way, I’ve been talking about it for months. My current novel is a thriller about the risk of political violence. The Liar’s Lullaby is commercial fiction, and written to be entertaining. But it has a political edge, because for the past few years I’ve been concerned that deadly violence could erupt from the depths of the American far right. During the 2008 presidential campaign, I became increasingly angry at the dishonest and over-the-top rhetoric that roiled both the Internet and the national media.
When The Liar’s Lullaby was published, last June, I wrote a Big Idea essay for John Scalzi’s blog. Here’s how the essay opens:
Delusions can be dangerous. And not only to the delusional.
That reality—that warning—underpins The Liar’s Lullaby. I’m not just talking about clinical delusions, such as “I can fly” or “The microwave wants me to stab you.” I mean political delusions—conspiracy theories about secret government plots to destroy America. Extravagant fantasies that involve Them, and their sneaky cousins, They.
And I explained what worried me:
Psychiatrists speak of “consensus reality.” In the paranoid subculture, people have formed a consensus unreality. They eagerly swallow the craziest lies. They crave proof the world is about to fall into the side pocket—because they’re gonna fight back.
But when commando wannabes show up at political rallies dressed like characters from “The Unit,” they aren’t restoring Norman Rockwell’s America. They’re indulging in fantasies of political violence. They’re playing Apocalypse, holding a karaoke revolution. Hey, kids, let’s put on an insurrection in my dad’s barn! You bring the camo, I’ll bring the ammo. Wolverines!
Tragically, these fantasies don’t always stay confined to the mind.
I believe in democracy and the rule of law. Since I wrote the essay, we’ve had political rallies where supporters paraded with guns strapped to their legs; where candidates and voters shot automatic rifles at targets labeled with an opponent’s initials; where a senate candidate spoke of invoking “Second Amendment remedies” if the vote didn’t go the way she hoped; where a major party’s candidate — Giffords’ opponent — published campaign posters depicting him in his army days, dressed in camo with an M-16 rifle propped in his crotch. This is not healthy.
Selling this as The American Way is diseased.
These days, thanks to the ’net, extremists can groom people for violence from behind a screen. The Manchurian Candidate doesn’t need to be kidnapped and held in a Red Chinese brainwashing camp. He can be hoodwinked and rallied to action from his own basement.
But right now, in the USA, the lies and crazed rhetoric aren’t simply emanating from the ‘net. They’re coming from major media outlets and elected officials. Many of the people spouting this idiocy are doing it out of self-interest or for entertainment – it’s a dog whistle that draws fans, ad dollars, and votes. Unfortunately, some of the people listening to them, out there in the real world, are not in on the joke.
As for Tucson: Yes, I believe the massacre can be considered political. While everything I’ve heard about Jared Loughner suggests that he’s psychotic, and that his psychosis drove his decision to kill six people and wound many more, the fact is: He shot a congresswoman in the head at point blank range, at a “Congress on Your Corner” event, possibly because he disliked the way she had responded to a political question he’d raised at an earlier public forum. It’s inescapably political.
This is not to say Loughner’s actions were motivated by right wing narratives. But he had apparently marinated in a stew of conspiracist rhetoric — the vitriol hawked up by what John Avlon calls “the Fright Wing.” It seems to have sunk in.
And I’m not writing here out of partisan passion. Because a liberal Democrat is presently America’s elected president, the current venom comes from the right wing. In the past, when conservatives have held power, the left has screamed and acted out. And I remember California in the seventies—the deadly Marin County courthouse siege, the Patty Hearst kidnapping, the violent and pointless circus of the Symbionese Liberation Army and its would-be “revolution.”
But we can only work on the present. We can only change the future. And today, it’s the right that’s presenting itself as the righteous opposition to tyranny, and stoking the flames. Voted out of power, the wildest response has been to claim the entire government illegitimate and evil. That’s both absurd and dangerous. And wild-eyed visions of armed revolt against the current administration are not simply immoral; they won’t work. It’s a fantasy, but can devolve into worse. It has before.
If you’ve never walked among the rows of chairs at the Oklahoma City memorial, you should. There are 168 of them. When you come to the small chairs, which represent the 19 children murdered that day, you shouldn’t feel unchanged, or careless about how violent ideology can wreak destruction in the real world. You should stand up, pay attention, and be ready to speak out.
That’s all I have to say for now. Except this — today, it’s a day to remember an American who preached non-violence: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
