USA TODAY International Edition
Our view: Homegrown hate eclipses threats from afar
Many Americans, the president among them, have been obsessed by a caravan of Latin American migrants making their way toward the United States seeking haven. The far greater threat is already here: homegrown haters who speak with weapons and seek to kill.
In recent days, their hatred found tragic outlets, at a house of worship and an everyday supermarket.
On Saturday, 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh were slaughtered by a man wielding an AR-15 assault-style rifle and three handguns. The deadliest attack on the Jewish community in America's 242year history left victims ranging in age from 54 to 97. The suspect nursed his hatred with anti-Semitic slurs and anti-refugee rhetoric. “I just want to kill Jews,” he told police after he carried out his unspeakable crime.
A few days earlier in a suburb of Louisville, a white gunman who tried but failed to force his way into a predominantly black church moved on to a grocery store and opened fire on two African-Americans seemingly at random, killing both. The shooting got scant national news attention, perhaps because the country has grown inured to gun violence.
All this unfolded during the same week that a stream of crude, but potentially lethal, homemade bombs were sent to the homes or offices of prominent critics of President Donald Trump, including former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and to the CNN newsroom in New York. The suspect, a Florida man who some acquaintances said was mentally ill, seemed to find purpose since 2016 for his rage in a fervent loyalty to Trump.
Welcome to America in the fall of 2018, land of the free and home of the deranged.
At times like these, Americans look to their leaders for words of comfort and consolation. And at a rally in Illinois hours after the synagogue massacre, Trump — the first president with a Jewish child and grandchildren — shared his horror: “This evil anti-Semitic attack is an assault on all of us. It's an assault on humanity.”
Welcome sentiments, but there is no denying that Trump has provided fertile ground on which such resentments can grow. A president who spews vitriol legitimizes hate and unleashes ugly forces in society. Just this month at a rally, the president praised a Montana congressman who body-slammed a reporter last year as “my kind of guy.”
Words have consequences. Inflammatory rhetoric can set off the unhinged. And a few scripted comments about unity, served with a facetious afterthought — “By the way, do you see how nice I'm behaving tonight?” — do not erase years of divisive rhetoric.
Of course, without easy access to high-powered weapons, society's angry losers would remain nobodies. But with assault-style rifles, the gun of choice in recent mass shootings, they can do incalculable damage.
Lamenting the mass killings now at the Tree of Life, and before it at a small Baptist church in Texas, a Florida high school, a Connecticut grade school, a Las Vegas concert, a historic black church in South Carolina and on and on is not enough.
Ordinary Americans who feel despair and powerlessness can make a difference. Next week, they'll have a chance to vote for candidates who support commonsense gun measures, who seek to calm rather than inflame. Citizens hold the power to stand up against hate and help prevent the next tragedy. All they need to do is use it.