"Entire subdivisions were unfinished and half-empty, victims of the housing bubble. The immigrants from Mexico who once flooded the Home Depot parking lots to get picked up for day labor were not only unable to find work, but they went from backbone of the Arizona economy to scapegoats, blamed (despite studies to the contrary) of taking jobs and draining services. Those retirees spent mornings on the golf course but afternoons inside the bubble of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and vitriolic local radio hosts like once and future GOP candidate J.D. Hayworth, and fear and anger sizzled like an egg cracked down on a desert highway. Government was useless -- closing rest stops on the interstates and farming out the prison system to inept contractors rather than truly balancing the budget."

Instead of focusing on the real factors...the banks, and too much borrowing and outsourcing of jobs...the people of Arizona engaged in blaming "The Other" in listening to the toxic soup of talk radio where "virulent anti-immigrant nativism -- occasionally sprinkled with things like neo-Nazism -- grew into the desert, as did fear of Muslims."  Bunch calls it a "new zeitgeist" -- where "moderate Democrats like Harry Mitchell and Gabrielle Giffords were not just to be disagreed with but to be physically threatened with vandalism or worse... and where guns became a statewide obsession."

Bunch's article is worth reading and reflecting upon. In reading it, ask yourself not just "Why Arizona?" but also could what is happening in Arizona be a harbinger to what will happen in your state. Is Arizona the canary in the coal mine?

Once again, I urge you folks to check out  the great El-P's "Deep Space 9mm."