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I've written here before about the increasing frequency of violent acts committed by people adhering to an extreme right wing worldview. And, paraphrasing Reagan: "Here we go again".
It is important to note that normal everyday Conservatives find the shooting in Arizona abhorrent. Violence is not a central part of the Conservative worldview. I don't believe violence is necessarily the result of any political worldview but of intentionally engineered propaganda aimed at dumbing down the populace until it can be fed whatever manner of lies suit the purpose of the propagandist. However, extremists of any political stripe can move beyond their core worldview into dangerous variants. In this time and place it's the GOP and they've been hard at it for 40 years.  Tragically they've been way more successful than we give them credit for.And it is impossible to deny that the GOP/Tea Party has certainly shifted toward the extreme. Armed and growing right wing militias -many associated with the Tea Party- are now seen as a very dangerous threat by the Department of Homeland Security.
To be fair, the shooter was obviously and demonstrably disturbed. It is likely he would have seized on any number of weird extremist worldviews to justify what he did, even if there were no ready-to-eat right wing extremism for him to pick up on.
Yet when he and the other murderers over the past few years have chosen an extremist right wing framework to hang their actions on, you'd think there'd be a little toning down of the rhetoric and propaganda on the right in response -at least a truly sincere denouncement. Yet the rhetoric only increases as the GOP genuflects before Tea Party supporters. Glenn Beck shows an unhinged break with reality every day -truly weird things that the AZ murderer believed in completely; should Republicans really have this guy as a friend?
Protestation to the contrary, right wing vitriol far exceeds that of left wing crazies, yet the media's attempts to be equivocal -what they call "balanced"- continually masks the scale of right wing vitriol. At this point in time we don't see left wing screamers having anywhere near the bully pulpit that dangerous blowhards like Limbaugh and Beck do. We don't see Democratic leadership engaging in the level of demonization we see from GOP leaders. You can certainly find similar wide eyed screaming nut jobs on the left -but we don't let 'em drive our bus.
The characteristics of right wing speech, involving intense emotion, rigid adherence to doctrine, dismissal of science, reason and academics, and rampant counter-factual propaganda should be red flags to any fan of civil discourse -and of democracy. That kind of speech, while legal and protected, is irresponsible and creates a culture of demonization. Indeed, central to the conservative worldview is the idea that any opposition to it is seen as inherently immoral. It's not such a surprise to see more and more people willing to engage in violence against those they see as immoral subhumans. This is a hallmark of authoritarianism.
When you think you are always right and everyone else is always wrong, you need to do a little intellectual soul searching. It is time for Conservative leaders to understand that people who disagree with them are not evil -and that they are never going away. They need to understand that in America we have a system of decision making that allows all of us to get along through compromise and, hopefully with willing partners, through creative solutions (it's happened before and it can happen again). It is a decade past the time when GOP leaders should have reigned in the extremism and the overheated rhetoric. It is certainly time for citizens to vote them out if they won't do it now.

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