Is polarized nation at fault for shooting?
Finger-pointing threatens to mute calls for unity
WASHINGTON— In the charged environment of 2017 it took only a few hours for a baseball diamond to be transformed from a peaceful practice field to a horrific crime scene and then to a vivid symbol of the tensions between the angry politics of our time and the better angels of the American people.
From President Donald Trump to congressional leaders of both parties to ordinary citizens came calls for prayers for the victims of the shootings that left House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., and four others wounded, praise for the Capitol Police officers who prevented an even worse tragedy and above all words of reconciliation and unity.
But barely on the edges of those remarks was the outbreak of another round of recriminations and a renewed debate about what has brought the country to such a point of division, what is to blame for what happened on that baseball field shortly after 7 a.m. and what, if anything, can be done to lower temperatures for more than a few minutes.
The country has been in this place before, perhaps too many times after violence that has Americans shaken and insecure. At those times, elected officials have reached across the aisle, embracing one another in friendship and unity. Ordinary citizens have rallied behind those leaders as one nation, vowing to put aside partisanship and recalling what it means to be an American.
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Republican and Democratic lawmakers assembled on the East Front of the Capitol and sang “God Bless America” in a display of national unity and resolve. On Wednesday morning, as the news of what had happened on the Republican practice field spread, Democrats preparing for Thursday’s congressional baseball game elsewhere stopped their practice to huddle in prayer for their Republican colleagues.
The president spoke as other presidents have done in times of tragedy or terrorism, saying, “We are strongest whenwe are unified and when we work for the common good.”
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., called on his colleagues to set an example. “Show the world we are one House, the people’s House, united in our humanity,” he said. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., implored her colleagues to make Thursday’s congressional baseball game an occasion “that will bring us together and not separate us further.”
But with past as prologue, other voices and other emotions threatened to drown out the words of the nation’s leaders. Six years ago, after the shootings that left then-Rep. Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz., badly wounded and six others dead, itwas the political right thatwas on the defensive. Those on the left charged that the incendiary rhetoric aimed at then-President Barack Obama and his supporters during his early years in office gave rise to a climate that made violence possible.
On Wednesday, itwas the political left that became a target from some on the right. The suspected shooter, James Hodgkinson, who was killed at the scene, was a longtime critic of the Republicans and a particularly harsh critic of the president.
His Facebook page included angry and vulgar words aimed at the president. Some Republicans saw the shootings as evidence that the president’s critics have crossed the line of decency in their opposition and fostered a climate that could produce what happened on Wednesday morning.
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, speaking at midday on Fox News, decried what he called “an increasing hostility on the left,” whether from comedians, from artists, from politicians or from ordinary citizens posting their views on social media. “You’ve had a series of things that send signals that tell people it’s okay to hate Trump ... ,” he said. “And now we’re supposed to rise above it?” He added, “Maybe this is a moment when everybody takes a step back, but there is no evidence of it.”
No one condoned what happened Wednesday, no matter whether the shootings were truly motivated by political views or the actions of a deranged person with a gun.
Wednesday’s shootings can act as a temporary circuit breaker to some of the hostilities and Thursday’s congressional baseball game can become an emotional and poignant coming together. But will that be enough to prevent a swift return to the kind of debilitating political conflict that has become so commonly accepted as the norm? History shows how difficult that could be.