Anger, fear swelling

Angry criticism came quickly over the photo of comedian Kathy Griffin holding a bloody mask depicting President Donald Trump’s severed head. Americans once again witnessed shock with the shooting by James T. Hodgkinson of several United States congressmen at a baseball practice. Citizens’ reaction to those reprehensible acts had a legitimacy grounded in a morality that has stood at the center of American civil and religious culture. Indeed, many of our minds probably flashed backed to American presidents and other national leaders felled by violence.

No decent or sensible American can defend the acts of Griffin or Hodgkinson. Yet we cannot ignore the effects incendiary language can have upon those of fragile dispositions, or blinded by rage. Americans should not permit ideological differences to blind them to the immorality of violence.

During the heat of the

2016 presidential campaign, I addressed the issue of violence in our culture and its possible effects upon our democracy and lives. I sounded an alarm when Donald Trump and his followers spoke of possible violence, including a surrogate predicting bloodshed and civil disobedience if Mr. Trump did not win.

Our country has witnessed more violence than we care to admit. Even when it fell short of brutality or murder, we have seen it in incendiary language that produced fear or a disruption in our quality of life. After the 2008 election, Obama haters displayed a portion of Psalms 109 on their vehicles. That biblical passage called for the president’s death, just as David had directly beseeched God to kill his (David’s) enemies and to leave their children in poverty. Sadly, Sen. David Perdue, R-GA., alluded to Psalms 109 in a speech to a large Christian gathering in June 2016.

Americans must not permit the language of violence to reshape who we are. Violence can and will consume us all, if we permit it.

Jimmie Lewis Franklin, Las Vegas