Hateful Words Fired Like Bullets Destroy Our Families, and Arizona Republican Politicians Like Jeff Flake Stand By and Say Nothing

Richard Cohen has a great column, "On the Right, Hateful Words are Fired Like Bullets," in today's Washington Post, discussing in part the 1970 Kent State massacre, something some of us remember as if it were yesterday and not over forty years ago:

I still ride a bike. I do 12 miles, several days a week, and as I do so I listen to music -- the Pandora service on my iPhone. I have created a station that plays folk rock. Lately, it has repeatedly played the Neil Young song "Ohio": "What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?" On the bike, I have to repress a tear.

"Ohio" has been around for 40 years, and I have heard it over and over again. It's about the 1970 killing of four students at Kent State University during a demonstration against the Vietnam War. The killers were the equally young men of the Ohio National Guard. I was in the National Guard myself once. How did this happen? "This summer I hear the drumming. Four dead in Ohio."

The hills slow me. I grind at them, going so slowly that when the song comes on I can listen intently to the lyrics. The line about the woman dead on the ground hits with concussive force. I feel I knew her. One of the four killed was Allison Krause, and she went to school in the Washington area. Her father, Arthur Krause, sometimes called me. Arthur had devoted himself to seeking justice for his daughter. He should have known better. He was a Holocaust survivor.


Saturday, on the bike, I listened hard: "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming. We're finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming. Four dead in Ohio."

I had been a reporter back when the killings occurred and it was a huge story to me. I longed for a chance to cover it, but I was young and raw, and the journalistic sluggers whooshed out of the newsroom, hailed a cab, jumped a plane and wrote the story -- the story. The story will keep you sane.

But it is a story no more and so, on the bike, the full horror of it came through: My God, American soldiers had shot American college students. This was not China, not Tiananmen Square, and not Iran and the pro-democracy rallies of last year -- not any of those places. This was America, just yesterday (take my word for it) and yet it had happened. How? I thought hard and then I remembered. Bullets had killed those kids, sure -- but they were fired, in a way, from the mouths of politicians.

The governor of Ohio, James Rhodes, demonized the war protesters. They were "worse than the Brownshirts and the communist element. . . . We will use whatever force necessary to drive them out of Kent."

That was the language of that time. And now it is the language of our time. It is the language of Glenn Beck, who fetishizes about liberals and calls Barack Obama a racist. It is the language of rage that fuels too much of the Tea Party and is the sum total of gubernatorial hopeful Carl Paladino's campaign message in New York. It is all this talk about "taking back America" (from whom?) and this inchoate fury at immigrants and, of course, this raw anger at Muslims, stoked by politicians such as Newt Gingrich and Rick Lazio, the latter having lost the GOP primary to Paladino for, among other things, not being sufficiently angry. "I'm going to take them out," Paladino vowed at a Tea Party rally in Ithaca, N.Y.

Back in the Vietnam War era, the left also used ugly language and resorted to violence. But the right, as is its wont, stripped the antiwar movement of its citizenship. It turned dissent into treason, which, in a way, was the worst treason of all. It made dissidents into the storied "other" who had nothing in common with the rest of us. They were not opponents; they were the enemy: Fire!

On my bike, I recalled those days and wondered if they have not returned. Sticks and stones may break bones, but words -- that singsong rebuttal notwithstanding -- can kill. We lose presidents to words and civil rights leaders to words -- homosexuals and immigrants and abortion providers, too. Richard Nixon is named in the song because he was the president at the time and because his words were ugly. He was enthralled by toughness, violence.

I hear the song more clearly now than I ever did. It is a distant sound from our not-so-distant past, but a clear warning about our future. Four dead in Ohio. Not just a song. A lesson.

When Democrats Think John Kerry Is Too Passionate About Climate Change Legislation, You Know It's Green Party Time

E.J. Dionne has a column in today's Washington Post saying that the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders are annoyed with Sen. John Kerry for being too passionate about getting a climate change bill passed:

One of the strangest lead sentences I have ever encountered appeared in Politico last week. It read: "John Kerry has been the most aggressive advocate of climate change legislation in the Senate this year -- so aggressive that it's rubbed some of his colleagues the wrong way."

The story went on to say that Kerry's "zeal" is "making some swing-vote Democrats cringe at the thought of negotiating with someone they fear is tone-deaf to the political realities of their respective states -- particularly in a difficult midterm elections year."

So there you have it: Once criticized for being too aloof and patrician, Kerry is now being assailed for daring to have passion for the cause of reducing the amount of carbon we are pumping into the atmosphere.

Note that none of this is about the legislative merits. Kerry is being criticized for caring too much about an issue and not thinking enough about an election -- for being insufficiently opportunistic and unprincipled.

And Democrats wonder why the polls find an "enthusiasm gap" that suggests their supporters will sit around grumpily in November while Republicans flood the polling places. . .

On the current course, even a Republican Party whose leaders say the most outlandish and extreme things -- and whose own congressional rank and file worry about their lack of a coherent program -- could take back the House and make deep inroads in the Senate.

Which brings us back to Kerry, who in a talk with me made no apologies for his eagerness to get an energy bill. What's striking is that he has negotiated with every industry and trade group imaginable to find a deal. If he's passionate about this, he's also been relentlessly practical.

And he notes that many business groups would prefer that Congress deal with the carbon question. "They see it coming from the EPA and regulation, and they would rather have us legislate," he said. Kerry's persistence is one reason the Senate leadership and a White House with which he's been working closely are still trying to push an energy bill through.

Someone needs to find the same pugnacious spirit on a jobs bill. Yes, crucial assistance to states that are slashing programs and raising taxes has been blocked by Republican senators -- including Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine. Both prize their moderate images, but neither has been willing to break with the GOP leadership.

But either Obama and the Democrats really believe that giving the economy another shot in the arm now is essential or they don't. If they put no punch behind their argument, voters will have no idea that some state cutbacks or tax hikes they are worried about could be avoided if Congress were willing to act.

The spineless, somnolent Democratic leadership in Congress and the White House needs a push from both inside the party and from those of us who do have passion about core progressive issues, including the fate of our planet -- those of us in the Green Party.