TRAGEDY IN ARIZONA

     Early impressions lead you to think the young man responsible for the violence is unbalanced.  Sick or angry, what he did was evil.  It violated life, liberty and the sanctity of social discourse.
     But there are others who would slay ideologies, beliefs and attitudes counter to their own.  They have filled the air and public space with so much poison it produces anger, fear and hatred which then leads to evil intent.
     This is a time of unreason.  There is so little study and deliberation.  Instead people propound and condemn.  Minds are closed.  We are weakening our precious human capacity to reason.
      There are forces at work that charge the atmosphere and others that fuel the anger. Politicians, bankers, investment hustlers-those of the Bonus Class and special privilege.  Politics is a cheap sensational game of attack and advantage put before the republic's interest.  The media aids and abets by loving to writhe about in controversy, and by covering politics like it was a horse race.  Campaign strategies, polls, advertising, and ephemera dominate.  I don't think Teddy White intended for all campaign coverage to become running drafts of his Making of the President style.  We need more accountants and money trackers.  Politics and government ,sadly, is in the last analysis about money.
     It is hard to tell anymore where news and journalism begin and end and where opinion, attitude and political favoritism take up.  That we even consider networks to be either conservative or liberal is stupid.  But we seem to be in love with stupid.
     When manipulative windbags use their radio or TV time or print or blog space to spread untruths,  and innuendo or when they feed fear, or distort, they tease themselves and their followers into a frenzy that wants to act out and seek a vestment of revenge. 
    Failure to confront the ugly shrill that has become a political mantra could pose grave risks to this nation, now in decline.  The last century evokes specter warnings.  Hate, propaganda and political might, in alliance, conjured modernity's greatest evil.