MORE TOXIC POLITICS ON THE WAY

It seemed appropriate to observe the media coverage of the Tucson shooting before making any comment of my own. As typical of the media, whether it involves a mass shooting, a giant oil spill, or a plane crash, the first report on the event occurring is hastily followed by "Whose fault was it?" The "whose fault" was immediately answered by the capture of the shooter at the scene. It quickly followed that he has some severe mental problems.

At that point the question turned to "why?" For some of the media the shooting was linked with the growing toxicity of our political discourse which in turn pressed on the mental imbalance of the shooter. In creating that set of linkages, some attention was given to Sarah Palin whose pre-election campaign website showed through the use of crosshairs that Representative Gabrielle Giffords was one of Palin's election targets. The upshot of all of this has been the right wing accusing the left wing of politicizing the shooting, arguing that the shooting of 20 people, six of whom were killed, was the work of a lone, deranged person-- PERIOD. He was not driven by the vitriol of our politics but was simply driven by his own demons.

But there was so much talk about the lack of political civility being a possible conditioning force behind the killings that this has become a fixed part of debate and news analysis. And since the left for some time has been attacking right wing rhetoric as the source of the growing political virulence and violence, the political toxicity/shooting linkage gained considerable traction in public discussion and cannot be dismissed simply by the right saying it was just a mentally unbalanced individual. The linkage between our toxic political atmosphere and the shooting is not likely to go away. It is just the latest but most tragic chapter about the current clash and clang in our political environment and how it is poisoning our political life. This toxicity was the subject of my first posting on this blog last July 13.

Which brings me to a new but related aspect of the virulence story that is likely to further reinforce the dark side of politics in the near future. It involves the anti-Muslim sentiment in this country which came to the fore with the destruction of the World Trade Center (WTC) in 2001 when teams of Arabs crashed their planes into the twin towers, the Pentagon, and an open field in Pennsylvania. In two previous postings, "Clash of Civilizations" and "More on Anti-Muslim Rhetoric," I noted the increasing and very vocal opposition to the proposal for building a mosque/Islamic social center near the WTC site. While the outcry by many in New York City (and fellow travelers from other parts of the country) was the loudest, there has been smaller but no less intense opposition to building new mosques in other parts of the country. In Oklahoma there was a fight over a proposed state constitutional amendment that would ban international or Islamic law as a basis for Oklahoma judges decisions.

Now we are on the threshold of the anti-Muslim war being carried into Congress, more specifically the House of Representatives, and even more specifically the Homeland Security Committee. With the GOP takeover of the House, that committee got a new chairperson, Peter King of Long Island, N.Y. Even before assuming the chair King announced that he would hold hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims and what he says is their lack of cooperation with law enforcement authorities. "The American media, American politics, the inside elite refuse to discuss this issue. When someone like myself says 'Let's raise the issue,' I am immediately denounced as a bigot, as a McCarthyite," he has said.

King has a reputation of being blustery and blunt so it is difficult to believe that his hearings will not turn into a hot media event with political grandstanding and also serve as a rallying platform for a multitude of persons and organizations with anti-Muslim agendas. Committee grilling, at least by some members, of various American Islamic leaders is likely to be perceived as a legislative lynching by the average Arab American and many others who do not share the anti-Muslim sentiment. If indeed the hearings are viewed that way, then what may follow will be American Muslim alienation from the larger society and an incentive for developing homegrown Muslim radicals, one of the greatest concerns of those responsible for our national security.

In sum, the high noise level in our political discourse, renewed with the Tucson shooting, may soon reach another level of toxicity when Rep. King brings our Muslim citizens before his committee.