I am listening to the giants of AfroPop music on WNYC –what bright and healing music-all those rolling rhythms and insistent voices. It is the perfect antidote to the anxiety and disturbances of this odd weekend. A Congresswoman shot, people killed, a mentally ill (maybe) man tackled and now in custody. Arizona has been in the “crosshairs” of the media for the last year or so as the anti-immigration policies; the racist education policy and the weirdest of the Tea Party candidates pretty much trashed the Constitution while financing vicious campaigns. But they did not defeat Rep. Giffords. Now she has a long recovery from having a bullet go through her skull. And somewhere someone posted a statement by Rand Paul, new Senator from Kentucky that “weapons kill people.” I guess they do when in the hands of a “lone gun man”.

Political violence is not new to this country as we all know, but with hardening of policies during the Bush Administration; the Obama victory and become the first President of African descent (that we know of) and the sustained economic depression, the culture is not digesting change with stoicism or grace. Meantime, we are stuck in Afghanistan and slowly extracting ourselves out of Iraq. But Bush left us with what is an “endless war” in one form or the other because he grew up on the Cold War and I am convinced thought that the best way to shore of America’s prominence was with wars and rumors of wars–hey his a Bibical kinda guy. What a f**king mess.

Some good things are going on in this country, but the political rhetoric is simply poisonous and as Jezra Kaye points out it will not go away. There are petitions asking that Palin et al tone down their rhetoric. They will not, I keep thinking of that Doors phrase You can’t petition the Lord with prayer” or something like that. I think that as long as we listen to their stuff, they will say just about anything. The only way the system can be rid of them is by benign neglect.

At least now that the job killing Republicans are back in power, they can be called out on their bad ideas and poor policy choices that got us in to some of this mess and we can hold Obama’s feet to fire when he starts to lean towards too much compromise. But I knew that these two years were going to be bad. Just didn’t think someone would get up in the morning and take an automatic weapon to a shopping mall in Tucson so that they could kill a Congresswoman.

But in America, you don’t need an idealogy to foster political violence, you just need a gun.

Patricia Spears Jones

Author:Painkiller, Femme du Monde and The Weather That Kills
718-344-3327
www.psjones.com