When shooter is not ‘the other’
Focus on bravery, not our differences
This was not about “the other,” the shooter with a strange name and an allegiance to some foreign terrorist screed.
James T. Hodgkinson was a 66-year-old home inspector from Belleville, Ill., who somehow felt his allegiance to Bernie Sanders in the presidential election was not in conflict with his preference for assault weaponry.
Yesterday morning, Hodgkinson turned up near a baseball field in Alexandria, Va., just across the line from Washington, D.C. He asked two congressmen if the players practicing in the early morning were Democrats or Republicans. When he learned the players before him were Republicans, practicing for their annual bipartisan charity game, he opened fire.
Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, the GOP House whip, was shot in the hip and crawled desperately across the infield, as his Capitol Police detail engaged the shooter and prevented what may well have been a fullscale massacre.
The great irony of this brazen and cowardly attack on Republican members of Congress is that it sparked the kind of bipartisan talk we haven’t heard in Washington in years.
“An attack on one of us,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said, “is an attack on all of us.” His words were greeted with a roar that crossed all partisan divides.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was praying “this attack on our family would help us to resolve our differences.”
Before Hodgkinson opened fire on that baseball diamond yesterday morning with his automatic weapon, when was the last time you heard members of Congress drop their partisan egos and express the kind of well wishes and humanity that transcend party and ideology?
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders wasted no time in expressing his regret and disgust that a follower of his campaign had committed such a cowardly attack.
Unlike the attack that nearly claimed the life of former Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords six years ago, there was no knee-jerk talk yesterday about a home inspector’s right to carry an assault weapon.
What was celebrated instead was the bravery of Rep. Steve Scalise’s Capitol Police detail, who prevented a tragedy of epic proportions.
Yesterday, in a bizarre and horrific way, one disgruntled home inspector broke through our partisan posturing.
Even Donald Trump, who has massaged that divide for all its worth, had no choice but to offer his prayers.
“We may have our differences, but we do well, in times like these, to remember that everyone who serves in our nation’s capital is here because, above all, they love our country,” the president said.
“We can all agree that we are blessed to be Americans, that our children deserve to grow up in a nation of safety and peace and that we are strongest when we are unified and when we work together for the common good.”
James T. Hodgkinson did not slip in from one of the countries we are so afraid of. He was an American. And he reminded us that above all, we all are, too.