SUNDAY TALKING HEADS - COMING UP SHORT

On the Sunday talk shows, they were talking about mental health, in my opinion, so that no one will think about the violence prone language and actions of our public officials that prompted the Fenster-like shooter in Tucson to wound and kill so many in an effort to get his principal political target, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

For one thing, this Congress is not going to do anything about mental health. 

We didn't do anything about it before the shooting in Tucson, nor the shootings before that one. 

It is ironic even to be talking about mental health reform, as Speaker John Boehner prepares to repeal the reform health bill this week. 

If the Speaker has his way, there will be fewer public tools to redress mental health challenges.

Don't get me wrong. 

This is a significant issue, and we handle it so bad in this nation's culture that even returning combat veterans fail to reveal the symptoms of PTSD or TBI, lest they be treated like pariah, even after they've risked their lives for this nation in Iraq or Afghanistan.

But we haven't finished discussing the predicate for considering mental health or even gun laws.

We must spend more time seriously discussing what our public officials did, and may continue to do, to prompt violence at home by their acerbic and vitriolic political discourse. 

Some have said it was "just exaggerated talk." 

That's just not true.

By way of example, we all remember those citizens last summer who shouted down congressmen and congresswomen in their districts, didn't allow them to talk, spoke with a great deal of abuse and disrespect. 

They were dehumanizing and denigrating our representatives so that we would lose respect for them. 

Consciously or unconsciously, they were attempting to create a psychological distance that allows for more than just spoken abuse to be suffered by our public officials.

No one can forget how some citizens spat upon members of Congress outside the Capitol. 

That was another advance in the wrong direction for a democracy and it was made possible by the abuse beforehand of members in their districts.

We have to consider more than how our leaders speak. 

We have to discuss what tactics are permissible at public meetings.

I didn't say legislate but, as a society, we have to re-visit what it means to lead and how one can best follow and express one's independent views.

Would that our nation would develop a code of conduct for public discourse that might minimize the risk to public officials and citizens.

Then maybe we shall heal, and not wound, as the President rightly instructed earlier this week.