Let's Try a Better Response

[Geee]

American Spectator:

For a conservative columnist responding to the obscene, leftist circus surrounding the soul-wounding shooting in Tucson, the devil on one shoulder so easily gets the upper hand over the angel on the other. The grief and empathy barely had time to inspire cogent response before being replaced by rage against the paranoid leftist attacks on Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and, by extension, all conservatives. Normal human feelings, the sorts of admirable feelings that drew Americans together after 9/11 and that drew volunteers from around the country to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina, were defecated upon by the sowers of discord who would portray political opponents as accessories to mass murder. The desperate urge is to strike back at these calumnious and viciously mendacious attacks, to escalate the conflict in a way that will make the leftist thugs crawl under the nastiest, most vermin-infested rock imaginable. But rather than escalate the language, the imperative is to elevate it. Can we give any voice to the angel who sits on the shoulder that is, quite naturally, on the right?

The temptation is to burn Paul Krugman in effigy, which would be no more than a taste of his own medicine. The temptation would be to wish that Chris Matthews would swallow a CO2 pellet and explode like a giant blimp. The almost irresistible dream would be to yell from the rooftops the obvious truth about what a cretinous scumball Keith Olbermann is, and watch so many people raise their voices in agreement that the Olberweasel cries in shame.