Nicola Lamb: Politics of fear spawn politics of the gun

Nicola Lamb. Photo / Paul Estcourt

Opinion

As sickening as it was, there was something awfully inevitable about the Tucson shooting.

The hard economic conditions and hardball politics of the past two years had contaminated the air enough for a spark to explode.

Although the specific event was unpredictable, the likelihood that a mentally vulnerable individual with vague anti-government leanings would somewhere, some time, attack an elected politician was not.

Nearly two years after Barack Obama's January 2009 inauguration the hard graft of digging out from the recession is still with Americans. Unemployment is at a stubborn 9.4 per cent despite hopes for a better year ahead. The Bush recession has yet to evolve into the Obama recovery.

Predictably, we've seen toxic politics flourish in a time of despair and disgruntlement. Obama - like Clinton and Reagan before him - faces a new Congress awash with his opponents, who have surfed a mid-term wave in a down time.

Despite a final session of bipartisan achievement, the last Congress was mainly marked by acrimony.

The Republicans have ridden and driven public frustration and fear over the economy and Obama's healthcare reforms. Out for the count in November 2008, doing so has brought them back to rude health.

In the Republican phalanx is the shouty Tea Party brigade - a bridge between the party's mainstream and conservative lunatic fringe.

Feeding the white-hot anger of their activist base has given the tea-baggers political oxygen and internal party power, with help from right-wing media supporters.

The high profile of the Tea Party movement and its stars, especially spiritual leader Sarah Palin, has pushed extreme ideas and rhetoric into the mainstream, where they jostle with the opinions of shockcasters in a polarised news media.

As politics has thickened in red and blue colours, so ideological opponents Fox and MSNBC have increasingly dominated the cable TV market at the expense of moderate CNN.

Palin is known for out-there comments from accusing Obama of "palling around" with terrorists during the presidential campaign to claiming his health reforms contained "death panels" to suggesting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be hunted down like a Taleban.

Tea-bagger Sharron Angle, who nearly upset Democrat Senate majority leader Harry Reid whom she kept telling to "man up", once spoke of "second amendment remedies" for Congress - referring to the right to bear arms.

The political imagery during the long healthcare debate and run-up to the mid-terms became dominated by Mardi Gras grotesques - bug-eyed TV host Glenn Beck, posters of Obama as Hitler and the Joker, one-time "witch" Christine O'Donnell and Angle.

Palin, with her guns, "Mama Grizzlies" and glamour is Danielle Boone herself - even if, in reality, she does take five shots to down a caribou.

The Tea Lady has cannily tapped the fear and loathing of voters still trudging through a dark tunnel of economic anxiety, using her frontierswoman schtick to suggest power and focus.

There's the macho imagery of the gun and fighting back and taking control for people who feel pushed around and uncertain about their future. Palin ran a graphic on her website targeting opponents' constituencies with gun cross-hair symbols and told supporters to "reload and take aim". Included was Gabrielle Giffords' district.

The mid-term elections featured virulent video attack ads including one in which Obama's face became the angel of death. While this may seem laughable or trivial it may not be to vulnerable people. With YouTube and the internet at large such messages now reach a much wider audience than was the case a few years ago.

Ever since Obama became a serious contender for the presidency, there's been a vague unease about his safety and the potential for violence.

A characterisation of Obama as a dangerous "un-American" - possibly Muslim, "socialist" and anti-white - gradually took hold among extremists.

According to the Guardian, gun sales went up 50 per cent after his election. The number of extremist groups, blogs and websites have increased since his election as have threats against legislators. While the Arizona suspect doesn't at this stage appear to have been directly incited to violence, the wider context and political climate is concerning.

As Arizona Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said: "This may be free speech but it's not without consequences."