We're back to the status quo antebellum

The fifty years between the Second World War and the collapse of the Soviet Union were an unprecedented era of political comity in American politics. An epoch when the business class played "nice" with the working/middle classes in the face of the Communist "threat." When the threat became moot, the gloves came off again, and we can see the results in today's economic debacles, persistent economic malaise, and the unrelenting destruction of the middle class and a society based on the equitable distribution of wealth.

Anyone with a modicum of familiarity with American history knows that violent, over-the-top rhetoric was the norm from the beginning of the Republic. One of the most striking things brought out in Sean Wilentz's The Rise of American Democracy is the alienness of the notion that two (or more) opposing views can coexist in a functioning polity. The Founders envisioned a ruling elite that would dispute means but not ends; the quarrels would be gentlemanly disagreements, resolved amicably. And even the subsequent Democracy of the Jacksonian Era didn't envision permanent political parties representing the varied interests of the country. As a consequence, the politics of the time vilified the opposition as "traitors" and "enemies of the Republic," and it wasn't uncommon for political rallies to devolve into brawls.

I bring this up, of course, in reaction to what happened in Tucson on Saturday (Jan. 8), when a paranoid schizophrenic let loose on a political rally, killing at least five people (including a 9-year-old girl) and critically wounding the district's US Representative (Gabrielle Gifford took a bullet through the brain but appears to be doing remarkably well, all things considered).

The Left-leaning blogs and bloviators have been running with the idea that the admittedly poisonous Republican and Tea Party rhetoric of the last few years is to blame for Jared Loughner's actions; the Right wing is defensively (and at times hysterically) claiming that Loughner is a "lone gunman," a crazed individual who's actually a Leftie and drug addict.

Neither side is entirely right nor entirely wrong. To the Left's credit, they have a point that a political culture that tolerates candidates sponsoring a day where people can shoot M-16s at targets of his opponent encourages extreme, possible violent actions, and it might be time to tone the rhetoric down. To the Right's credit, Jared Loughner is not a Tea Party or Republican activist. Unlike al Qaida or the Red Brigades, there was no conspiracy to kill a government official. He really is a paranoic whose fantasies were readily fed by the crap spewing from Right wing outlets like Fox (e.g., Beck, Bachmann, Palin, etc.).

I think a sane and refreshingly cogent interpretation of what happened can be found in Harry Shearer's HuffPo post from Jan. 10. As he writes:

This country has had toxic political rhetoric since its birth pangs, and there has undeniably followed in the past two centuries an occasional outbreak of political violence. But now we're being told that toxic political rhetoric is dangerous, because of its possible effect on the less rational, more mentally unhinged folks among us. So, maybe it's time to ask this question: Why are they among us?

Loughner had been expelled from college and rejected by the military for mental instability, and yet he was able to buy 30-round ammo clips from the neighborhood Wal-Mart.

There's no simple explanation for what happened Saturday, nor is there a simple solution to the problems it pointed up but I think Shearer has hit upon an important factor that's being ignored.