Fed-up Americans crave unity amid violence
LOUISVILLE, KY. — She flipped through television channels and radio stations, scanning from conservative to liberal media, searching for any sign that the polarized nation had finally reached its tipping point.
For days, Elisa Karem Parker had been seeing updates in the news: A pipe bomb sent to liberal political donor George Soros. One delivered to CNN. More to former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other prominent political figures villainized by those on the right — a bizarre plot unfolding just ahead of the midterm election that will decide which party controls Congress.
“It’s like our country is becoming ‘The Hunger Games,’” Parker, who considers herself squarely in the middle of the political divide, told her husband and teenage son over dinner.
As authorities intercepted more than a dozen pipe bombs addressed to President Donald Trump’s most ardent critics — and then, on Saturday, as news broke of yet another mass shooting in America — political scientists and ordinary citizens observed again that rabid partisanship had devolved to the point of acts of violent extremism. Many wonder whether this latest spasm might be the moment that the nation collectively considers how poisonous the political culture has become and decides to turn the other way.
“If this isn’t it, I’d hate to think about what it will take,” said Parker as she cast her ballot in early voting last week in Louisville, Kentucky.
The mail-bomb plot is merely the latest in a series of stunning attacks to test how much political animosity Americans are willing to accept: the shooting of a Republican congressman at a baseball practice, the white supremacist rally that turned deadly in Virginia, the recent ricin scare-letters mailed to Trump and other top members of his administration.
On Friday, authorities arrested a suspect in the bomb probe — a 56-year-old registered Republican and Trump enthusiast who “appears to be a partisan,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said when asked about motive. By then, politicians and talking heads had already backed into the usual corners: Both parties blamed the other, and the president called for unity, then again described liberals and the media as villains. The hope Parker had that this might be a turning point faded.
Then came the shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue that claimed 11 lives, an attack likely to cause ugly partisan debates over gun control, hate speech and more.