in far away Tucson, Arizona, USA, on Saturday, January 8, 2011, a young man opened fire with his semi-automatic weapon and by the time he emptied the magazine, six people lay dead, with a dozen or so wounded. Among the dead were Christina Taylor Green, a nine-year-old girl, and a federal judge.
Jared Loughner, 22, engaged in that shooting spree outside a supermarket while Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords was on her way to address a constituency event. She escaped death but got seriously wounded when a bullet went through her head.
Loughner, according to those close to him, had shown traces of mental instability and, therefore, the shooting incident could be described as an irrational behaviour by somebody mentally unhinged. That has left many Americans wondering whether the world’s sole superpower has in place an efficient mental health system.
For a young man whose mental stability was under suspicion to find in his possession such a powerful weapon also brought to the fore federal and state laws as to who should own or possess what weapons.
While these two issues, especially the one on gun ownership, are already subjects of debate by politicians and social commentators, a third element in Loughner’s shooting spree which has pricked the conscience of many Americans and sent the alarm bells ringing is the fear that the country is intensely becoming politically polarised, to the extent that people are beginning to react violently on matters purely political.
In other words, Loughner may have his own mental problems and might have taken advantage of liberal laws on gun ownership to gain access to a dangerous weapon, but the act on that Saturday morning had a lot to do with politics.
Some people are linking the sad incident to political rhetoric. This was rebuffed by Sarah Palin, the former Alaska Governor, who was specifically criticised by some commentators for using an online graphic presentation of crossbar symbols that marked targeted Democratic districts in the US mid-term elections.
At a memorial service last Wednesday for victims of the shooting in Tucson, President Barack Obama, already well-known for his powerful speeches, made an emotional delivery which left many in no doubt that America was gradually heading towards a direction that might not be good for the health of the nation and appealed to Americans to heal divisions opened by “sharply polarised” political debate.
“But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarised, at a time when we are too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it is important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds,” he said.
Obama soothingly went on: “Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy and to remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bond together.
“We recognise our own mortality and are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth, that what matters is not wealth or status or power or fame but rather, how well we have loved and what small part we have played to better the lives of others.”
America is a sophisticated society. At least the majority of the people can tell the difference between political pranks and the reality. They are more equipped to draw the line between those things said merely on political platforms to provoke opponents or excite supporters and those that carry the true meanings of the words said. Even there, they are realising rather tragically that they are becoming victims of their own freedoms.
They say if you see a neighbour’s house on fire, you must start preparing for any eventuality. If, after many years of practising democracy which has become the measure for judging others, Americans cannot tolerate dissent and accommodate racial differences, then we in Ghana cannot afford to take things for granted.
We have, for some time now, noticed a creeping culture of intolerance in our politics. At first it could be attributed to the natural consequences of our infant democracy. Gradually we are realising that no subject gains any national attention unless it is painted in political colours. It must either be in the colours of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) or the New Patriotic Party (NPP).
It is now easy for a crime suspect to wear political colours and that immediately turns his prosecution into persecution. It is now easy for people to be applauded for using abusive language against a perceived political opponent.
We have become such political fanatics that we are blind to the naked truth. Serious national issues on health, education, energy, water and sanitation, agriculture and many others have been reduced to political pranks, to the extent that we seem not to appreciate the national interest as against parochial or self-serving interests.
The most dangerous trend lies in the language some of the men and women who claim to be our political leaders use, some bordering on vulgar and others with ethnocentric undertones.
We have been blessed in several ways. There is hardly any family in Ghana today which can claim it has no blend of another tribal blood in it. Through a deliberate policy of Ghanaianisation introduced by the first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, and which was pursued by other leaders, Ghanaians of different tribal and ethnic backgrounds are developing gradually into a unit. Even then, some people still want to make distinctions and scorn others.
Our democracy may be the envy of others, but we know we still have a long way to go. We can make it stronger and better if we collectively begin to identify the common enemies. They are not the political opponents. They are the reckless statements we make, using abusive and inflammatory language; they are the lies we tell to deceive and undermine; they are the things we say and do which, instead of bringing us together, drift us apart.
We do not need to wait for a Loughner to surface from nowhere and start pumping bullets into us before we awaken to the reality that our paths are intertwined, leading to the same destination, and the earlier we begin to accept one another, the better. Some of the things we say may sound ordinary but they can turn into ammunition tomorrow to devastate us.
Let us beware of hate words.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
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