Heated rhetoric

After a day of horror, a call for civility

The attempted assassination on former President Donald Trump was likely the work of a mentally ill loner, but it’s still indicative of a troubled society. A tragedy was narrowly avoided with the former president and GOP nominee, but unfortunately one life was lost and two other persons seriously injured at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania — all for nothing more than listening to a candidate express his First Amendment rights.

This country’s responsible citizens should “turn down the temperature,” as President Biden said the following evening to a national audience. We all need to appeal to our better angels, mothballed though they may be, and ask ourselves, “Is this who we are? Why is there so much division and seeming hate in our country today?”

For months, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has warned of increased levels of threats to political candidates. Threats and misinformation continue to spread with the help of social media channels who don’t take responsibility for what is published on their platforms. (And the law, specifi cally, Section 230 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, currently protects them so not to “stifle innovation.”) And it seemed there were lapses in Secret Service protocol, which will be investigated thoroughly. No doubt there will be a move to increase appropriations for protection measures for presidential candidates, whether incumbents or not.

The usual conspiracy theories immediately began floating, of course. It took all of 30 minutes after the event before we were emailed a theory that the Democrats had conspired to take out the former president.

We’ve since learned the shooter was a troubled 20-year-old with seemingly mixed or at least unformed ideologies. (He was a registered Republican but donated a small amount to a progressive political action committee in 2020.) The fact that he thought solving whatever perceived problems were there with the business end of a rifle is an indictment on everyone who contributes to the rising temperature in national politics. (And, yes, we include ourselves in that assessment, though we’ve certainly never advocated shooting anyone.) For the former president’s part, he seemed somewhat contrite, or at least had turned down the incendiary rhetoric.

Divisive and sometimes violent rhetoric in our political discourse has been present since the days of the founders. But it has become the norm over the past half century and escalated mightily in the past decade. It’s exacerbated by the easiest access to powerful weapons any society has ever had.

The event might be a chance to do something about gun violence. This country still experiences mass shootings daily. On the same day the former president was shot, a shooting in an Alabama nightclub claimed 13 Americans. It wasn’t even a blip on the news radar.

Over the July 4 holiday, no fewer than seven shootings killed or injured youth aged 16 or under. That doesn’t even include shootings which injured adults during the same time period. Why do we continue to accept this?

We’ve got to become better people, no matter what our beliefs. We’ve got to be Americans first, then members of a political party. A local GOP leader, Bruce Campbell, is attending the Republican National Convention. He’s a good person and we wish him a successful event. Similarly, Democrats will hold their national convention at a later date, and their roster also has many fine people. We must realize the “other” party is not the enemy, but its members just believe in different ways of accomplishing better things for our nation.

Let’s take care of one another, whatever our political differences. Please pray for our nation, and its leaders as this shakes out, and pray we avoid copycats or other vengeful acts. And let’s all turn down the political rhetoric as we reflect on what could have been a terrible disaster. — Ken Esten Cooke, publisher