The Central Problem

Jonathan Chait argues that the Arizona shooting is not the product of right-wing rage. He says that attempts to connect the shooting to mainstream politics take two forms, condemnation of combat imagery in campaign rhetoric and general condemnation of incivility etc., and that neither is really compelling. I don't think I disagree with him that both of those specific complaints are somewhat lacking, but I do think he's missing a third form of critique. Maybe enough people aren't making it, I'm not sure, but I do think it's the main point.
To me, the problem is not general incivility. I agree that politics involves strong feelings and that strong feelings deserve strong expression. I'm not convinced that the problem is Republicans calling Obama a Socialist or Communist per se, but rather that they are lying/wrong when they do so. Likewise, I don't think anything that could be called a "combat metaphor" is necessarily part of the problem. Chait quotes an altogether hackish article by Glenn Reynolds, a "libertarian" who says of himself that he would be perfectly happy in a world where happily married gay couples had closets-full of assault weapons, that argues that Markos Moulitsas used a "bullseye" metaphor similar to Sarah Palin's crosshairs map, and that Obama himself said something about "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun." As to the latter, "bringing a knife to a gunfight" is a rather well-known metaphorical expression. And as to the former, using a bullseye (which is different from a crosshair, mind you) to demonstrate a target is one thing. Perhaps Palin's map falls into that same category; I don't really think it's the main problem. But using rifle-style crosshairs, while linking to that map saying "Don't retreat--Reload!", when half of your entire public persona is your tendency to shoot things with a rifle, strikes me as another. But in any event, that's not the main point, or at least is not the center of the main point.

To me, the big problem is very specific, and it is the revolutionary rhetoric on the right. It is Sharron Angle's "Second Amendment remedies," a view also endorsed, even more forcefully, by a woman who was at one time the leading candidate to be incoming Congressman Allen West (R-FL)'s chief of staff. It is the Tea Party protests at which many protesters are wearing rifles strapped across their backs. It is this idea on the right that a) the Second Amendment exists to protect a right of violent revolution against a tyrannical government, and b) we currently have a government sufficiently tyrannical to justify making use of that right. It is the idea that one has the right of violent revolution if one is losing at democracy. That, to me, is the most serious problem: people on the right are seriously advocating the idea that the time for politics is over, that it is a responsible thing to do to prepare for a violent struggle against the United States government. Think what it does to a disturbed, paranoid mind like Jared Lee Loughner seems to have had, specifically to hear respected political candidates telling you that the time for revolution may be near. The thing about the "Second Amendment remedies" thing is that it is not a metaphor. It is not meant as a metaphor, no one could reasonably take it as a metaphor. Sharron Angle and Joyce Kaufman, a candidate and a potential chief of staff for a candidate, both advocated specifically the use of violent force to overthrow this country's government as a possibility in the near future. If they lost this election. That is the problem. That is the heart of the problem. Sarah Palin's map is the heart of the problem only to the extent that it connects to this non-metaphorical talk of actual violent rebellion; otherwise, it's just a sideshow.