Krugman's Column on Arizona

Krugman's column is, of course, self-recommending - but this one was even better than I had expected it to be. A couple things I liked:

1. He came out loud and clear that Loughner was obviously mentally disturbed.

2. He distinguished between rhetoric that is heated and insulting, which he sees as part of a democracy and apparent on both sides, and rhetoric that is "eliminationist". I'm not sure I'd put it exactly that way - that puts a quite narrow cordon around an especially bad brand of rhetoric when I think there are other harmful types of rhetoric as well. But I do like the fact that he makes a distinction. There's something very different about Tea Party rhetoric, and Krugman starts to hit on what that is.

3. He doesn't mention the "Tea Party" once. I found that interesting and I'm not sure why it is. I really see the Tea Party as the primary problem and the Republican Party simply as being opportunistic - and I think there's a big difference between the Tea Party perspective and the libertarian perspective for that matter too. I've maintained for months now that the Tea Party is not a libertarian movement. Anyway, I'm not exactly sure why he does it.

Some selections:

"It’s true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled. But that doesn’t mean that his act can or should be treated as an isolated event, having nothing to do with the national climate.

Last spring Politico.com reported on a surge in threats against members of Congress, which were already up by 300 percent. A number of the people making those threats had a history of mental illness — but something about the current state of America has been causing far more disturbed people than before to act out their illness by threatening, or actually engaging in, political violence.

And there’s not much question what has changed. As Clarence Dupnik, the sheriff responsible for dealing with the Arizona shootings, put it, it’s “the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business.” The vast majority of those who listen to that toxic rhetoric stop short of actual violence, but some, inevitably, cross that line.

It’s important to be clear here about the nature of our sickness. It’s not a general lack of “civility,” the favorite term of pundits who want to wish away fundamental policy disagreements. Politeness may be a virtue, but there’s a big difference between bad manners and calls, explicit or implicit, for violence; insults aren’t the same as incitement.

The point is that there’s room in a democracy for people who ridicule and denounce those who disagree with them; there isn’t any place for eliminationist rhetoric, for suggestions that those on the other side of a debate must be removed from that debate by whatever means necessary...

...Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.

And there’s a huge contrast in the media. Listen to Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann, and you’ll hear a lot of caustic remarks and mockery aimed at Republicans. But you won’t hear jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at The Washington Post. Listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will."