As bits and pieces of information come to light regarding the shooter of Gabrielle Giffords, a Federal judge and numerous other people (including children) at a Tucson public event, we need to exercise caution about motives and consequences. In particular, be careful about lumping together Tea Party rhetoric – from Sarah Palin or anybody else – with this murder.

First of all, the initial bit of information we get about Jared Loughner is one of a deranged young man with a typically pretentious, socio-pathic outlook. His book list is probably cobbled together from various literature classes he’s taken in high school and community college. Do we really know what he thinks about Animal Farm, Communist Manifesto, Mein Kampf, and Gulliver’s Travels? No. So let’s leave that speculation aside for now.

As for the Tea Party rhetoric, I’m the first person to condemn that organization. But I’ve never seen them as particularly dangerous or racist – the way many liberals do. In fact, I see them as a largely geriatric group of men whose world has passed them by and now, in a crowning insult to them, the one public program they’ve come to count on – Medicare – is being “raided” in order to serve some other segment of the population. This group, in addition to the fringe “Constitutionalist” Paulites (who are quite selective about what part of the Constitution they think sacrosanct) and the GOP pols trying to exploit it for relevance, are what make up the Tea Party. There is, quite simply, no evidence yet that Jared Loughner was in any way influenced by the ideology of the Tea Party.

The bigger issue will be the rhetoric, especially Palin’s infamous “target list” that looked like a call for assassination in the minds of an unstable person. While I would certainly hope that politicians of all stripes exercise more responsibility and restraint with their rhetoric and symbolism, I am loathe to condemn the entire Tea Party movement for the actions of a nutjob who seems, as of now, to have needed no extra motivation from a right-wing pseudo-populist group.

This could all change, of course, if we get information showing Loughner to be a more politically aware guy – especially if we hear of others who might have been privy to his plans. But for now, let’s avoid the temptation to go there. We don’t have any evidence yet of a McVeigh-style ideology at work – one that really DID resonate with some of the anti-government militancy of 1994.

Let me also say that my opinion is shaped in part by what happened to the progressive community here in Knoxville a few years ago when a deranged man open-fired on our church congregation at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. That man also uttered some far-right rhetoric in his suicide/homicide note. But he was clearly driven by personal demons more than any coherent political agenda. Oh, and it was in July 2008, LONG before anybody had heard of the Tea Party (and before anyone outside Alaska had heard of Sarah Palin).

So again, be careful with the Giffords shooting. It is very easy to speak nonchalantly of the “climate that made this happen.” The reality is that the climate for this is ALWAYS present in America – even if political assassinations in this country are thankfully rare.