Tucson in mid-late morning. I’m thinking about a small bit of the movie Jackie I which I watched at the Loft this past week. I’m drinking coffee and browsing for mention of the wanted posters created by Kennedy opponents in Dallas before the assassination.
Trying to verify before publishing anything about it (Yep, I’m like that.) I ran across Joyce Carol Oates tweet about the mention in the movie Jackie of wanted posters of JFK in Dallas before the assassination. In the film Lady Bird asks her if she wants to change clothing, remove the now iconic pink suit, before landing in D.C. but Jackie says that she was going to deplane in the blood spattered Chanel suit so that his detractors who put up the wanted posted accusing JFK of treason to see what they’ve done.
Oates’ tweet sent a chill through me. The chill then reminded me that today is January 8th. It has been six years since the Tucson mass-shooting that killed 6 and wounded so many.
I went to twitter and created a moment, which are linked series of tweets to tell a story, and put Oates’ post with other posts about the call for targeting Giffords and the assassination attempt on her life.
I have been deeply moved and troubled lately by discussions of post-truth America where large swaths of our population believe Orwellian constructions of reality that fly in the face of logic and human memory, and that have gone unchallenged by the Fifth Estate.
We all frame events. Those who can afford it or have the sway to create public relations campaigns can change perception about events and how history is written as is shown in by the creation of “Camelot” through Jackie Kennedy’s efforts.
This has always been the case with pomp and circumstance to remind lowly commoners of the gulf between them and royals.
But the trend in America, and in other nations, to use media to straight out lie, subvert democracy, and incite violence against groups with different beliefs from yours as well as to incite attempted assassination of political leaders is a horse of an entirely different color. The horse is red. Soviet red. Nazi red. Conservative red. The red of blood shed six years ago by friends of mine after political vitriol helped motivate an unstable person to target a Congresswoman.
I thought the movie, Jackie, was very thought provoking. Words matter………it would be helpful if we used them in a positive way and not to provoke the underbelly of this country to rise up and stomp on the goodness and civility that we need to cherish and ensure that we remain a true democracy.
Words do matter. I hope to show a connection between some of the heinous acts that have personally impacted the great and the small. I cannot be as nice as many would want me to be. We are in such a precarious state. They are already stomping.
I haven’t seen the movie yet, I am looking forward to it. Please keep in mind that I agree with you 100% that today we can post anything we want too, any version of our truth or an outright lie. Sadly it is now up to the reader to decide what is true, what is opinion (we all have them are entitled to them and they differ greatly) and what is actual real, hard news.
Blood has been spilled on both sides of the political aisle, that is a fact.
I blame the people that kill in all circumstances. I don’t like one bit those posters or those tweets and wish they didn’t happen but they did not commit the murders. If I were to blame anyone else it would be those closest to the mentally ill that did nothing. That again is a whole different can of difficult to sort out worms.
Hi Doreen, I believe we all have to take responsibility for our actions and the lacework of connections spun by all that is influenced by what we say, do, don’t say, and don’t do. I’m an “It’s a Wonderful Life” type of person. As someone who has studied, researched, and written about meaning generation and semiotics for decades, I know that we are all responsible for a much larger swathe of influence than can be measured.
I truly feel that we are on the edge of Fascism and that we must call out the horrific wrongness of greed, duplicity, and double-speak.
The tweets and posters did help kill. That is where I think we differ in our Guns, bullets, shooters, stores that sell the guns, the people that sell the guns, the law makers that allow unfettered access to guns all kill. I am just not the type of person that can draw lines between things. I don’t even see sides. I see facets. These are not simple issues and will not ever be resolved with simple fixes.
I am 100 percent with you and so distressed at this post-truth America. I am also distressed at those who were complicit in the lies and those who had many excuses for why they were ok. They were not ok. I am not ok and our nation is not ok. We keep at it and we keep at it…I can’t even finish that sentence.
Thank you for your support, Carol. I originally wanted to keep politics out of WLP, but then I thought about how differently post-Civil-War U.S. might have unfurled had we had records of how hundreds of thousands of women were personally and permanently impacted by the war and reconstruction. We have an opportunity to show the interdependence of the personal and the political… and the need for women to record and share their political thoughts.