The United States of rage
Pipe bombs in the mail, semiautomatic gunfire in a synagogue. Two suspects filled with hatred — hatred stoked into rage by a vicious political discourse that has become so common that the only surprise is that we are still surprised to see it boil over into violence.
And President Donald Trump’s greatest concern? That it distracts from politics. In a tweet between the discovery of 14 pipe bombs mailed around the country to various Democratic, liberal, and media figures and the slaughter of 11 people at a Jewish temple in Pittsburgh, the president of the United States lamented: “Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this “Bomb” stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows — news not talking politics. Very unfortunate, what is going on.”
Unfortunate that the news is covering the terrorizing of the president’s political critics rather than his speculation about who’s voting for whom?
After a rote, scripted call for unity, Mr. Trump went right back to stoking the rage with the outrageous claim that the root of last week’s violence is not the incendiary rhetoric — some ripped right from his campaign — in which the suspects bathed themselves, but the press, which he called “the true Enemy of the People.” By Monday, the bombs and temple massacre were distant memories; the president was attacking political foes and revving up fear of invasion by a caravan of people f leeing violence in Central America.
The president did have one suggestion in response to Saturday’s shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue — a shooting that appears to have been the worst anti-semitic attack in U.S. history: more armed guards.
This is a solution? Where won’t we need them? Churches? Synagogues? Mosques? Movie theaters? Shopping malls? Libraries? Night clubs? Outdoor concerts? Schools? And with four highly trained police wounded Saturday, just how many armed guards do we need for this task?
What we need is intelligent gun control in America, including laws that stem proliferation of high-powered, high-capacity semiautomatic weapons designed for war, not peaceful society. We need politicians like Mr. Trump to stop saying gun violence has nothing to do with guns, or that it’s some vague mental health problem that we just need to get our arms around in some indefinite future.
We need politicians like Mr. Trump to stop vilifying their critics and political opponents as traitors and criminals, and to stop blithely using buzzwords that have special meaning in racist and anti-semitic circles.
We need politicians like Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence to stop engaging in incendiary speculation about Middle Eastern terrorists hiding among Honduran refugees. We need them to talk about constructive solutions, like intelligent assistance to help countries combat violence and improve their economies, not threaten to close our border and cut off aid.
And we need politicians like Mr. Trump to do what this president so far will not: Stop fanning the flames. Stop stoking the rage.