It’s time to defuse heated political rhetoric

We’re better than this. We have to be. We used to engage in political debate. Yes, it was at times heated. But it was debate. Not threats or violence.

We no longer exchange political ideas.

Now, stoked by the overheated rancor that has become the underpinning of our discourse, we build pipe bombs filled with shards of glass and deliver them to those with whom we disagree politically.

Our ugly, bitter partisan bickering reached a boiling point Wednesday. A criminal one. The nation reeled as one after another, a series of pipe bombs were mailed to key Democratic leaders, including former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former President Obama and the offices of cable news giant CNN in downtown Manhatttan.

We watched this new level of discord, as anchors at CNN joined fellow employees in evacuating their headquarters.

All the devices seemed similar. Luckily, none of them detonated.

The devices showed up just one day after a similar device was discovered at the suburban New York home of Democratic mega-donor George Soros.

Later Wednesday, two additional packages were intercepted that were addressed to U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters.

Thursday morning the onslaught continued, with a suspicious package being removed from the New York home of actor Robert DeNiro. Then word was received that two devices meant for former Vice President Joe Biden were intercepted.

All the intended targets share a common theme. All are noted Democratic leaders or supporters. And all have found themselves the targets of President Donald Trump’s heated diatribes. Two years after taking office by defeating Hillary Clinton, the president still brings her up at rallies while his supporters chant, “Lock her up.” He has accused Soros of paying Democratic protesters he sometimes refers to as “mobs.” He routinely goes after CNN and much of the media as “fake news” and the “enemy of the people.” He has come glaringly close to encouraging violence.

Later in the day, at least for a few hours, the president adopted a different tone.

“Let’s get along,” he said to a rally of his faithful who just minutes before had engaged in the same taunt of Secretary Clinton. At the same time he vowed to bring those responsible for the explosive devices to justice. The president challenged the news media to join him in taking this approach.

Earlier in the day he had condemned what many considered to be acts of terror targeting top Democratic officials.

“Acts or threats of political violence have no place in the United States,” the president said. “This egregious conduct is abhorrent.”

All of this continues to play out in the increasingly bitter, angry run-up and debate leading to the mid-term elections now less than two weeks away.

Former CIA Director John Brennan, himself the target of one of the pipe bombs mailed to CNN where he offers analysis that has often been critical of the president, referred to the spate of suspicious devices as “a very unfortunate turn of events,” before turning his sights on Trump’s increasingly volatile rhetoric.

“Unfortunately, I think Donald Trump, too often has helped to incite some of these feelings of anger, if not violence, when he points to acts of violence or also talks about swinging at somebody from the press, the media,” Brennan said.

CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker seemed exasperated by the White House’s stance, calling the situation “a total and complete lack of understanding at the White House about the seriousness of their continued attacks on the media.”

To be fair, this is an equal opportunity cauldron. Democrats such as Waters have encouraged publicly confronting Republicans. Republican officials have been chased out of restaurants. Former Attorney General Eric Holder suggested that instead of the old standard of when they go low, we go high, to instead “when they go low, we kick them.”

There is still much we don’t know about the recent rash of suspicious devices. We don’t know who was responsible, or why.

We do know they are the latest – most sinister – element in the overheated bombast that has taken our political discourse over the edge. We can be better than this. Our democracy depends on it.