Time To Grow Up (A Forlorn Hope)

Can we please all take a moment this week to grow up? As a nation, I mean- I know there are pockets of maturity and sanity out there in America, there have to be- but enough is enough. What happened in Arizona was a tragedy and the act of a deranged lunatic- yet the smoke had barely cleared before there was a mad dash, media stampede to proclaim (circumspectly of course) that the entire thing was the fault of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. This, in turn sparked a similar stampede on the part of the Conservative blogosphere to find every shred of evidence, every remark ever made by anyone of the Liberal persuasion that smacks of the violent, vitriolic rhetoric that Left is so busy denouncing under every Republican rock and stone.

It's a feeding frenzy and quite frankly, it's disgusting. I suppose it's inevitable: the media need their ratings and violence sells. It's a side-effect of the profit driven corporate media and, as I've already noted it's utterly disgusting and it's far too easy to wrap myself in cynicism about the future of our nation when I turn on the news and see it everywhere I look.

People are dead, including a nine year old girl. A Congresswoman had a bullet literally go through her brain and all anyone can seem to do is talk about whose fault it is. It's wrong. It's just wrong.

My thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims and I'm praying that Congresswoman Giffords makes a speedy recovery, but in the meantime, at least for one week, I'm out. No politics, no news, I'm staying out of the political kiddy-pool for the week. I don't want to get sucked into playing politics with dead Americans and I have very little time for those that do.

All I can hope for is that somehow, someway, as a nation, we can all grow up a little and exercise some maturity. It was the act of a deranged lunatic. And people died. If there ever was a time to lay off and calm down and rise above the partisan bullshit, it would be now. But America, we reap what we sow. And this is what we get for letting our governing be done by the extreme ends of the political spectrum- the media vultures circle and both sides try to score political points off the backs of dead Americans.

Can't we all just grow up? Or is that too much to hope for...