Does careless talk really cost lives?

The heading I have given this post refers to an old wartime slogan, and invokes a paranoia, or at the very least a wariness about what you choose to talk about in public. Now, however, the villain appears to be a gun toting maniac, not invisible German spies.
 I am, of course, referring again to the shootings in Tucson, Arizona and the accusations that the gunman, Jared Loughner, was egged on by the increasingly inflammatory political debate which permeates both Arizona, but also wider American politics. I, for one, am sceptical of such ideas. Whilst I didn't like Sarah Palin's statement in the aftermath, believing it to be cloying and safe, the idea that she is somehow, however indirectly, responsible for Loughner's actions is questionable.
 That is not to say that the political climate in the USA is not heated and that, in investigating the context of Loughner's killing spree, we have not stumbled on some of the more troubling aspects of US political discourse.
 Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, the most high-profile victim in Loughner's rampage, criticised Sarah Palin for targeting key Democratic seats with "cross-hairs". A rhetoric of "take up arms", an anti-government sentiment that also happens to be pro-guns, a Second Amendment, giving American citizens the right to "bear arms" which sits at the heart of the Tea Party's love of the hallowed US Constitution; this is, broadly speaking, the culture that is now being blamed for Loughner's actions. But the blame is nebulous, it is difficult to place it on one person, there is no neat causality chain leading back from Loughner himself. And so, as it was with the 9/11 attacks, public consciousness has to try and create one.
 What it speaks to instead is the new politics of America. Obama and Palin are, after all, the first generation of political icons to embrace social networking, the Internet, to whip up campaign support and spread their respective messages. This presents a problem when it comes to explaining Mr Loughner. The blame for his actions could lie with no one, but if you scoured the Internet, it could lie with about fifty different people. Online marketing, Internet movements, they are harder to put a name to than one might think. Loughner and the Tea Party may share ideals when it comes to their anti-government sentiment. Yet, overlap does not equal blame, as the online world continues to make politics ever more individualistic.
 Talks of reforming what can and cannot be said in public are somewhat futile in the world of the 24 hour new cycle. Obama last week proved that the only way to combat hateful talk is by utilising its opposite. Indeed, his White House has been too silent for too long, and this is part of the problem.
 More importantly, movements can become fads very quickly in this day and age; for an example closer to home, consider the brief mobilisation of the curious beast that is Mumsnet, against the producers and writing staff of Eastenders. Already the outrage has been swallowed by more important and up-to-date news. It will probably now remain where it belongs, tucked away in the first week of 2011, to be resurrected by a review of the year. This is where Loughner belongs: whatever his problems, it is his victims and not him, that deserve to be remembered.

Obama may be divisive in actions, but he is still unifying in words

The political vitriol which both preceded and follows the shooting in Tucson, Arizona was temporarily halted today, when President Barack Obama made a speech at a memorial today. Paying tribute to those who had been killed, and in the case of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, seriously wounded, he acknowledged that "our hearts are broken". But, almost like the third act of an American film or in a manner befitting the fictional American President Josiah Bartlet of West Wing fame, Obama seemed to find again that hopeful, soaring rhetoric that governed his campaign for office, nearly three years ago.
 Obama has had a year in which he has proved to be a divisive President. From healthcare reform, to the failure to bring the unemployment numbers, to the "shellacking" he, and the Democratic Party suffered at the hands of the Republicans last November, it has been a difficult, and sometimes gridlocked year.
 Yet the reason, perhaps, that Obama has become such an antagonistic, polemic figure in the eyes of the Tea Party is simply because he has allowed himself to be; public political discourse has turned against him, because running the country prohibits him from being a part of it.

Today, he proved why he may confidently win re-nomination and re-election in 2012. For, with one speech, he once again spoke in the language of hope, unity, heroism and patriotism that defines him. Obama's greatest asset in the increasingly divisive conservative-liberal debate that has surrounded the Tucson shootings is his ability to rise above it, to condemn it and challenge it. Obama is a new President in his use of Facebook, Twitter, but his rhetoric is in the best tradition of some of the greatest United States Presidents, it is introspective without being indulgent, and inspiring without being controversial. It is a lesson that Tea Party activists, Republican contenders could do with learning. Obama's oratory creates the myth of one, strong, familial America and a cynic could brush this aside; but at least it is a united America, not one which hates its government, or its President. It's an America which can be better, which can shape its destiny. Just words maybe, but it's the poetry which Obama's government has lacked in recent months and needs to reclaim.