He showed up alone, drove himself, and didn’t have any security with him. A couple folks glanced over, but nobody bothered us, and when he left, the cashier told him to keep up the good work.
Later that spring, I ran into my local grocery store late one night just before it closed. I immediately bumped into Carl’s brother Sandy, then the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. He looked troubled. “They moved the bread,” he said.
“I know. I had the same problem last week. Let me show you where it is,” I said. He was by himself; I was by myself. He bought bread, I bought milk, and we got in our cars and went home.
There was something very nicely non-imperial about both those encounters. But I worry that this kind of interaction may now be threatened, thanks to last week’s horror at a shopping mall in Arizona. There’s talk about enhanced security for all members of Congress. I don’t know how we could afford that.
There are five hundred and thirty-five of them. Most have to run for office every two years. They need to be out among the people, talking to them, hearing their concerns.
We have a problem with people feeling alienated from their government. That’s going to get even worse if every congressman is surrounded by men with sunglasses and bulges under their suits.
We do need two things. First, to pressure our politicians to tone down their rhetoric, and stop using violent images to demonize their opponents. In the most recent election, Gabrielle Gifford’s opponent appeared to hint that maybe she should be taken out of office with an M-16 rifle. That’s obscene, as was a flyer showing her district targeted through a gunsight. Yes, most of us know they are metaphors. But there are thousands whose knowledge base is weak and whose grip on reality is none too strong.
And we need sensible policies on guns. Let me read you a quote from the majority opinion in perhaps the most pro-gun ruling ever rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court, the 2008 decision that held that individuals cannot be denied the right to own and keep fire arms.
“Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications” on their sale. The author was Justice Antonin Scalia, perhaps our most pro-gun justice.
The shooter in the Arizona case was so mentally troubled he was no longer allowed to attend community college. Yet he could, and did, legally buy one of the most lethal weapons made.
That’s something the people of Arizona should change. Making sure Michigan’s policies are sensible is something we need to do. Apart from everything else, a similar tragedy in this state would be the last thing our troubled economy, and democracy, need.
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