A ‘family’ for now

It shouldn’t take a shooting to make official Washington put aside its rancor and appreciate just for a moment the common bond of public service. It shouldn’t, but in times like these the truth is, it does.

“You know, every day, we come here to test and challenge each other,” Speaker Paul Ryan said yesterday on the House floor. “We feel so deeply about the things we fight for and believe in. At times, our emotions can get the best of us. We are all imperfect. But we do not shed our humanity when we enter this chamber.

“For all the noise and fury, we are a family.”

And so to see House members rise as one yesterday and applaud Ryan’s remarks was to know that all is not lost — that there is still much to be proud of in the institutions that remain strong in times of trouble.

The shooting of House GOP Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana, a congressional staffer, a former aide and two members of the Capitol Police, could have turned into a massacre had it not been for that Capitol Police detail assigned to Scalise, who watched over the early morning baseball practice.

We know now that the gunman, who later died of wounds suffered in the attack, had intentionally targeted the Republicans on the field. So deep was his hatred that he is believed to have traveled to D.C. from Illinois. His online rants against Republicans go back to at least 2012. He seemed to have found kindred spirits in the Occupy movement and is believed to have been a volunteer during the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign.

That caused Sanders to take to the U.S. Senate floor to “condemn this action in the strongest possible terms” and reiterate that “violence is never the answer.”

Those who pander to haters — whether on the left or the right — always run the risk that their words will find fertile ground in the warped minds of the easily persuadable. It is what happens when we divide our world into “us” and “the other,” when we are no longer able to see our common humanity.

“I ask each of you to join me in resolving to come together,” Ryan urged yesterday. “To lift each other up … and to show the country — show the world — that we are one House. The people’s House — united in our humanity.”

Now if only that spirit will last — at least for a little while.