Gunned Down

A lot of people seem pretty grateful that the 9mm slug and following propulsive exhaust gasses, unleashed at point blank range, that ripped through the brain of Congressional Representative Gabrielle Giffords from back to front, didn't completely liquefy the contents of her skull, killing her instantly. Several other people did die from gunshot wounds, including a senior Federal judge and a little 9 year old girl. That seems bad enough. I doubt Gabrielle will be returning to a normal life and her Congressional duties any time soon.

It seems moot as to whether or not the shooter was politically motivated or just mentally deranged. It seems to me that many, if not most, of the Tea Partiers, Birthers, ethnocentric racists and xenophobes that make up the bulk of the Republican Party base are mentally deranged, the leadership being closer to the pod people that replaced previously rational people a la "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and the rank and file little more cognisant of what's really going on than the shambling zombies in "Night of the Living Dead".

What seems to me the most typical response to the shooting, by the Right Wing, that I have seen so far, was posted on "Hot Air" and lamented that Sarah Palin would now be in great danger from retaliatory gun violence from enraged "Leftards" and she had better recruit and travel with large numbers of heavily armed body guards. Right, that's where we should be placing out main priorities at this time, protecting the safety of Sarah Palin. What would the country do without her? We need someone to tell us who to shoot next.

It would be nice to think that this senseless episode of gun violence would provoke a discussion among Americans about the heightened levels of inflammatory, divisive, political rhetoric among us and the inevitable consequences of them, but it would also be a mistaken thought.