Innocence

I am angry. I am angry and upset. There's been another tragedy in the world, and it has claimed the life of a nine-year-old girl named Christina Taylor Green. Nineteen other people were shot and Gabrielle Giffords, the Congresswoman who was the target, is still in the hospital.

According to this article Christina had just been elected to the Student Council at her school. Her aunt invited her to come and she went eagerly, hoping to learn more about the world of politics.

I think what angers me the most is that in someone's mentally depraved way of making a political statement, a child's life was taken. I am furious and heartbroken that on Saturday a little girl with a bright future went off to see the people who change the world, and never came back.

But I think what's even more heart-wrenching is how suddenly everyone's playing the blame game. It was my understanding that the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, was the one who caused this. He was the one who attempted to murder Congressman Gifford, who shot 19 other people, who killed somebody's little girl. And yet, suddenly everyone's pointing fingers at the RIGHT WING EXTREMISTS and SARAH PALIN and RUSH LIMBAUGH and ANN COULTER--it literally makes me sick.

I'm a feminist, and most feminist websites I read for the news have a very liberal slant. A few of the articles made me angry, and not in an angry at the point of the article, angry at the writer. Blaming the conservative media? Are we serious? They say that they've made death threats in the past, and while they probably didn't mean them, they were influential.

No.

No, they weren't. I'm not one to say we shouldn't take death threats seriously, but honestly, there have been just as many liberal commentators, writers, and bloggers who've made just as many as Limbaugh and Coulter. Google 'kill George Bush' if you don't believe me.

Apply the same logic to religion--there are crazies in Kansas that take the Old Testament to an extreme, wanting to kill anyone who isn't white, heterosexual, and religious. Is that Christianity's fault? No. There are Hindu extremists in India who hunt down and murder Christians and Buddhists. Is it the religion of Hinduism's fault that they're doing this? No.

It doesn't matter what 'influences' you. What it comes down to, is you are responsible for your own actions. Loughner is responsible for his atrocities, not Sarah Palin, not her stupid gun target map (Politics have been using weaponry metaphors since the start of America, so please shut up about it!) not Rush Limbaugh's remarks, not Ann Coulter's articles. So stop blaming the republicans and conservatives, please!

Remember Christina Green and what that means. Let's help stop the violence, be it through guns, words, or actions.