Day: January 9, 2011

Arizona The Capital Of Anger, Hate And Bigotry: Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik

It is a telling factor that the Sheriff of Pima Country, Arizona, Clarence Dupnik, with Tucson as its major city, has declared that the state of Arizona has become the capital of anger, hate and bigotry in America. This was his reaction to the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords!,

As the author stated just shortly before this tragedy, Arizona has become the new Mississippi or Alabama of the the second decade of the 21st century, with its promotion of right wing views on illegal immigration and health care legislation and its advocacy of insane gun freedoms without controls! 🙁

Can any Arizonian be proud of the racist, discriminatory legislation, which victimizes Latino immigrants, many of them Mexican-American? Can anyone be supportive of banning Mexican American studies in Tucson, as the state Attorney General has done, while permitting ethnic studies programs for Asian American, African American, and Native American groups?

Can anyone be supportive of gun laws that put basically no limits on gun ownership and carrying of weapons, and the push to allow such weapons on school and college campuses?

Can anyone be other than embarrassed at the failure to cover poor people who need transplants of all kinds of organs, putting the lives of 96 patients at risk, all over $1.2 million, a paltry amount of money that could easily be covered if state officials cared about poor, mostly minority patients?

Arizona’s state government should hold their collective head in shame! 🙁

Governor Jan Brewer and other state officials should be roundly condemned and be held accountable for the loss of any of those 96 lives of transplant patients and the two who have already passed away! 🙁

Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl should be censured for their total lack of concern for the racism, discrimination, and denial of medical care to needy patients, and their support of gun laws which will only raise the level of violence that occurred yesterday, leading to the tragic circumstances we now are reeling from! 🙁

If Arizona wishes to regain its respectability, it needs to change its course on these various issues, and start acting in a civilized manner!

Rhetoric DOES Affect Public Attitudes, And Incites Unstable People: Time For Responsible And Civil Dialogue Before We Have Greater Tragedy Emerge!

The tragic events of yesterday, leading to the shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords; and the slaughter of three senior citizens; a nine year girl born on September 11, 2001; a congressional aide of Giffords; and a federal judge, is a warning sign to everyone that the tone and content of rhetoric DOES have a real effect on all of us, and tends to incite unstable people to violent action!

Therefore, it is essential for everyone to tone down their language and promote responsible and civil dialogue, and it is time to DEMAND that Sarah Palin behave in a civil way when she utters her never ending statements on Facebook and Twitter; that candidates such as Sharron Angle who talk about “Second Amendment remedies” be, like she was, repudiated by the voters as reckless and irresponsible; that a local talk show host (Joyce Kaufman in South Florida) who talks about the use of “bullets, not ballots” be denied the right to use the airwaves to promote her hate and paranoid behavior; that national talk show hosts, including Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, who care not a whit about building up hatred and resentment as long as they enrich themselves, be denied the right to spew their poison over the airwaves; and that politicians of all persuasions be called to account if they spread hysteria, fear, and division through their rhetoric!

Does anyone have the right to “shout fire in a crowded theater” and claim it is freedom of speech? The Supreme Court, in Schenck V. US in 1919, said NO, and that should apply to people in public office, media people, and all of us, who need to understand that responsible and civil dialogue is essential, or one day, we will have a tragedy of greater magnitude emerge, on the level of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, or a renewed concept of civil war, where everyone suffers because of irresponsible, reckless rhetoric!