Will We Remember Tucson? Was It Enough? Is Anything?

[kpete]

From Esquire magazine comes a sad, but true analysis of the events of the past week --- and the past decade and a half:
Will We Remember Tucson? Was It Enough? Is Anything?



The most remarkable thing about what happened in Oklahoma City is how little it matters today. The president of the United States gave a fine speech Wednesday night in Tucson at the memorial for the people Jared Loughner shot. The only mention of Oklahoma City in connection with the president’s speech was to compare it with the speech that another Democratic president had given in the aftermath of the memorial service for the 168 people that Timothy McVeigh murdered in 1995.

..................................

The activist Right wants this rhetoric for 2012. It wants the same dark energies that helped it win the House last fall. It wants to be able to say the same things with impunity that it's been saying since 2009, as though Tucson never happened. Oklahoma City might as well have happened to the Hittites.

Which is how nothing ever changed. Which is why Oklahoma City wasn't enough.

One-hundred and sixty-eight people.

One-hundred and sixty-eight lonely, empty chairs.

It wasn't enough.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/tucson-shooting-memory-4874485#ixzz1B9sKcxzc


..............................

the rest:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/tucson-shooting-memory-4874485

[gratuitous]

1. You're talking about our national religion

We will not turn our back on our god of the High Church of Redemptive Violence. Our society has decided that the ongoing, wholesale massacre of our citizens is a small enough price to pay so that the god of the HCRV is appeased. Just like any other religion, it has its True Believers, its devout adherents, and its heresy squad designed to ferret out and punish wrong beliefs. It has its foundational statements and myths, sacred texts and regular worship meetings.