No, I Don't Blame Sarah Palin

Fate seems to play strange things with my life. I was in Denver for the trial of Timothy McVeigh and now find myself in Arizona for the recent assassination attempt on the life of Representative Gifford, gunned down by a disturbed man whose motive is unclear but tied somehow to personal delusions and demons.  It is hard to see how shooting a nine-year old child, senior citizens, and a legislative aide serves a satisfying political purpose, but no one ever said the mentally ill needed to make sense.

Now, mental illness is something with which I have had some slight connection. My mother was a psychiatric nurse, first in the UK, then in Canada, whose career ended with service in a high-security prison facilty for the criminally insane in Matsqui, British Columbia. My own grandmother suffered from dementia caused by a stroke for all of the time her life overlapped mine. I grew up knowing my mother's patients and visiting the facilities where she worked, even including the prison at Matsqui. While not a trained psychiatric professional, I still have more personal insight into mental illness than many others who are busily arguing over responsibility for this last terrible event in Tuscon.

This morning's Phoenix paper is full of finger pointing, particularly at Sarah Palin. I think all this is completely useless and a mere continuation of the very things that have brought us to this point; this country is enduring national division, as significant as the one during those terrible months and days leading up to America's Civil War. We are divided with both sides locked into positions as securely and morally smugly as those who went to war to impose their versions of truth..

Nevertheless, I believe that blaming Sarah Palin, as various members of the media are trying to,  is both disingenuous and a copout. Now, as every reader of this blog knows, I am no great fan of Ms. Palin's simplistic self-promotion nor her pandering to the worst among us. I must admit a grim satisfaction to watching her get bitten on her butt by the tiger she attempted to ride. Yet I do not link her to the shooting-- except for her complicity in the general mood that has swept the country.

One thing I quickly realized about mental patients is that their pathology is a distortion of the culture around them, a parallel universe but not one that is completely unrecognizable. For example, I once saw a disturbed man in Italy attempting to pinch someone's rear in a train station. He was no threat, but it seemed to me that he was desperately trying to be part of a culture from which he was excluded and in which his disability did not allow him to participate.

Only someone who interviews the shooter may be able to explain the desperate motives that led him to kill. But my guess is that somewhere inside his brain he had a crippled vision of the culture around him. America is a culture that is easily misperceived, particularly by those whose brains can see only the shadows of the culture around them. Partisans on both sides of every issue have villified one another and expressed their positions absolutely--there is no grey, only black and white. This verbal assault is not supposed to lead to actual murder. If such happens, those who have spoken harsh words publicly are the first to deny any responsibility--this, of course, is a given since accountability is uncomfortable. Nevertheless, there have been historical precedents when political thought led to assassination, and one has to wonder how someone can deny any responsibility when faced with the murders of Presidents Lincoln, McKinley, and Kennedy.  There IS precedent and as Representative Gifford said herself, there is an effect when people indulge their prejudices.

So, I do not blame Ms. Palin. Hers is only one voice. There is enough blame to go around. I do believe, however, and very strongly, that the beloved Constitution of this country did not and should not merely be one-way, with the conferring of freedoms and benefits. Those who choose to exercise their rights need to understand that the right of free speech comes with the price tag of responsibility for what is being said. I would think a great deal more of Ms. Palin and the media that supports her and the other pundits, if instead of reloading and having her staff defend her, she looked in the mirror and shuddered. I might also think that the US was maturing if it stopped the pernicious practice of finding scapegoats rather than taking responsibility for itself.