Words have consequences, part two

Back when Dr. Tiller was murdered, I wrote a blogpost called Words have consequences, in which I wrote about Operation Rescue

Calling someone "America's Doctor of Death" is dehumanizing him to an extreme degree, allowing people to ignore the fact that he is a person, which again allows people to do things like murdering him. Operation Rescue might not have pulled the trigger on Dr. Tiller, but they created an environment, where someone could pull the trigger on him.

Now, after the Tucson schooting where several people, including a child and a federal judge, were killed, and a congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, was critically wounded, I want to revisit this theme.

Ever since the Obama election, the rhetorics on the right have been vitriolic, and used violent images. There have been cases where people carried weapons at events where the President spoke. There have been talks of "revolution" and sedition - heck, the Tea Party crowd takes their name from the very concept of an American revolution.

In this sort of environment, it is hardly surprising that someone will follow up on that rhetoric, and take violent action.

The choice of victim is not surprising either.

After all, a public supporter of the Tea Party, and a senior figure of the Republican Party, had used violent imagery targeted specifically at congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.



Before the midterm election, Palin posted the above map, showing which members of congress she wanted people to target, using cross-hairs to show the location of their districts.

After congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords managed to win over tea party favorite Jesse Kelly, Palin posted the following tweet



Combining the image of a cross-hair and using the word "RELOAD" sends a very violent message indeed, even if it is unintended - something which I don't believe it is for a second, given the general usage of such in the current US political environment. This imagery was meant to intimidate, to threaten even. Since the congresswoman didn't hide, someone took the rhetorics to its next logical level, and tried to murder her.

This is the sort of actions that the current US political environment breeds.

Yes, there were vitriolic, perhaps even violent, rhetorics under the George W. Bush presidency, but not as part of the mainstream debate, not from leading political figures. To try to make it seem so, is to make a false equivalent, and to let the people who created this political environment get away with it.

It is no coincidence that militias have been on a rise in the US since President Obama was elected.

At the moment, Sarah Palin and others of her irk are busy trying to distance themselves from the shootings, even to the degree of scrubbing the web from the sort of messages I've posted above. I don't for a second doubt that they are shocked, perhaps even horrified, over the fact that someone did the very thing that they have been implicitly advocating for two years. Yet this doesn't absolve them of their guilt, and we should not let them get away with having creating the environment where this sort of actions happens more easily. The people who uses violent imagery should be shunned by the rest of society, not get their own TV-shows.

Words do have consequences, and it is high time that Palin and her irk started to feel the consequences of their words.

Koch's treatment

If you follow the fringe of the health debate - where the woo proponents and the deniers make their round - you'll probably have heard something about Koch's Treatment, a cure for whatever health issue being debated at the moment.

Why does this treatment always come up? Well, because it's supposed to be a cure-all treatment, that can help you against everything, including cancer (and in recent times HIV/AIDS). It was "developed" by Dr. William F. Koch, who in 1919 announced the "discovery" of a new drug, which he called "glyoxilide". This drug is injected into people, and it supposedly increases the effectiveness of the immune defense, which gets rid of the problem.

Need I say that this is not only unproven¹, but in many cases scientifically impossible?

Koch's claims about his treatments have be falsified repeatedly, and when analyzed chemically, it's indistinguishable from distilled water - probably because that's what it is.

Of course, this doesn't keep people from promoting it as a homeopathic remedy, and from claiming that there is a conspiracy keeping the wonder drug away from people. The main reason mentioned for the conspiracy is of course claimed to be money, since the medical companies would go bankrupt, if such a wonder drug came to the market.

However, this is not the only reason mentioned - Koch's treatment has long ties with the Christian far right in the US. As a matter of fact, Koch created the Christian Medical Research League to sell it to people, and among his most vocal supporters in the past, were people like Gerald B. Winrod² and The American Fascist Party³, and according to James A. Aho, the drug "is celebrated by [Christian] Identity spokesmen as a spiritual 'homeopathic preparation,' not an 'earthly substance' as are 'allopathic poisons."⁴ Of course, to these people, the main reason why the drug is kept from the market, is a Jewish conspiracy which either tries to undermine the health of White people, or who does it for financial reasons.

Interesting to see how crazy political beliefs and crazy medical beliefs can tie together. Maybe we should start emphasizing Koch's ties to far-right fundamentalist ideas and organizations?

¹ Koch Treatment / Koch Synthetic Antitoxins (BC Cancer Agency)

²Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science by Martin Gardner (Courier Dover Publications, 1957) page 213-215. The relevant passage can be found at Google Books

³The Politics of Healing by Robert D. Johnston (Routledge, 2004) page 100. The relevant passage can be found at Google Books

⁴The Politics of Righteousness - Idaho Christian Patriotism by James A. Aho (University of Washington Press, 1990) p. 265.