This is one of those weeks when I have to pull out the “Sunday editorials were often written earlier in the week” sign. This week, the subject that dominates the Sunday editorial page is the Wednesday shooting at the congressional baseball practice.
I’m not trying to suggest the topic isn’t important. The shooting itself was horrible, though not more horrible than the seven other mass shootings that happened last week. In fact, the ballpark shooting was still the only topic on the news, even as gunman of the disgruntled employee variety was killing four and wounding two at a UPS facility in San Francisco.
So sure. If the aftermath of those terrible moments at the ballpark is that it finally moves America from square one, that’s good. If we stop pretending that one amendment isn’t subject to the sort of curbs and limits that are placed on little things like speech, assembly and religion, that’s good. If we decided that maybe next week shouldn’t be graced by eight mass shootings … that would be really good.
It’s just that, in the compressed timeline of TrumpLand, where every day seems to bring a fresh outrage, and every evening provides jaw-dropping revelations, Wednesday morning seems like a month ago.
Please, Donald Trump, can you crazy more slowly? You’re 70 years old. Take it easy. Breathe. Give us a chance to properly deal with one simplistic lie or juvenile insult at a time. That way maybe every issue can get the scrutiny it deserves.
Unless, of course, that issue is the health care of the nation, which is being rewritten under a rock.
Come on in, let’s pundit.
Leonard Pitts goes to the ballpark.
You felt it with a sickening certainty the instant news of a mass shooting flashed out from Alexandria, Virginia. So it was disheartening, but hardly surprising, to hear certain conservatives reflexively blame Democrats and their so-called “hate speech” for the carnage. …
There was still blood on the ground when conservatives began laying the shooting at liberals’ feet. Republican Rep. Chris Collins blamed “outrageous” Democratic rhetoric. (He later expressed regret for that comment.) The InfoWars website cited a “hysterical anti-Trump narrative.” Radio host Michael Savage spoke of a “constant drumbeat of hatred.”
But the catalog of who-said-what isn’t the point. Here’s the point.
At some point, you’d think we’d learn that rhetoric — excluding that which explicitly or implicitly calls for violence — does not “cause” people to shoot, stab, or bomb. By that logic, you’d have to blame Fox “News” and other organs of the right for the Planned Parenthood shooting and the Atlanta Olympics bombing.
Just a reminder that, when it comes to assigning the blame for this shooting—or the next—99 percent of the blame goes to the guy pulling the trigger. Personally, I’m saving the other 1 percent for the guys that gave him the trigger.
Kathleen Parker gets that idea, even though she had friends on the field.
Yet, we defend our great nation as the best there is. This is certainly true if you happen to be a Syrian refugee or a survivor of slaughter in South Sudan. But is this really the best we can do?
I’m not much interested in debating gun control or assigning blame. The media didn’t open fire on that baseball field, nor did Trump. Some horrible guy did. He was apparently political, based on his social-media ramblings against Republicans. But it’s highly doubtful that he was reacting to some random act of punditry or a presidential tweet, maddening though they can be.
More likely, he found the impetus to act out his narcissistic rage in the same interior space that other mass murderers mine for imagined meaning.
Parker’s prescription for finding some good from this horrible situation?
We can’t un-crazy crazy, but we can each try to stem the madness. It begins with simply caring: By looking up from our cellphones and making eye contact; by asking the checkout girl about her day; thanking the garbage collector; doing favors without a scorecard; giving away money because someone needs it more.
Yes, we could all tip our waitress more. Or, you know, we could do something about giving people filled with “narcissistic rage” less access to instruments they can use to spray sixty-something shots across a ball field. I’m for both.
Frank Bruni and the people who went there.
In denouncing the hatred that brought bloodshed to a baseball diamond in Alexandria, Va., some people went ahead and spread more of it. Rush Limbaugh, take a bow. You called the shooter “a mainstream Democrat voter.” What do I call you? I want to be clear about my disgust, but not disgusting in my expression of it. That’s the hell of American politics and American discourse today, with its 140-character emissions.
Honestly, is there any word off limits in describing Limbaugh? He’s The Artwork of Hieronymus Bosch, a one man show. You want cavorting with evil? Laughing over misery? The only reason not to pick Limbaugh is that his act is so dependable it lacks that soupçon of surprise.
… a 28-year-old North Carolina man named Edgar Welch showed up armed at a restaurant in Washington, D.C. Welch had fallen under the spell of #pizzagate and come to believe that children were being imprisoned and sexually abused by Democrats in a basement there. One of the fabulists who’d spread this tale was the son of Mike Flynn, Trump’s short-lived national security adviser.
Bruni seems a bit too quick here to spread poxes on houses. Am I saying pundits on the left are blameless in the case of Hodgkinson, while pundits on the right bear more responsibility for Welch? Yup, actually, I am. The worst statements on Hodgkinson’s Facebook page came from Hodgkinson. The massive, emphasis on the “ass,” idiocy of “Pizzagate” was entirely a fabrication designed from the outset for no other purpose than generating rage.
Nelba Márquez-Greene and another shooting that got a lot less respect this week.
I am writing this while sitting in a Starbucks in Newtown, Conn., on the last day of school, anticipating the return of one child when I should be getting back two. My daughter, Ana Grace, was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting of December 2012. She will always be 6 years old. She will never give another Father’s Day present to my husband, Jimmy. I wish her death were only a hoax.
Honestly, I’m sure Márquez-Greene has important points to make about the ridiculously poor decision to interview Alex Jones, plus the ridiculously poor decision NBC made in hiring Megyn Kelly. But after that paragraph, I was too devastated to read it. Go try it if you’re made of sterner stuff.
Carl Hiaasen on good guys, bad guys, and guns, guns, guns.
If you think the terrible sniper attack on the Republicans’ baseball practice near Washington was just another instance of an angry nut having easy access to guns, you haven’t been listening to Rep. Tom Garrett of Virginia.
He and some other GOP colleagues say last week’s shooting illustrates the need for more lenient firearms laws, not stricter ones.
If it weren’t for the District of Columbia’s tough firearms regulations, they say, Rep. Steve Scalise and the other civilian victims would have been able to bring guns to the Alexandria ball field and defend themselves.
You thought this wasn’t going to be the response from the gun lobby? Of course this is the response from the gun lobby. More guns is always the response. Hiaasen has some dark humor about the appropriate gun and holster arrangement for short stops, but the point is ...
Three people, including Scalise, were wounded in the initial burst of rifle fire. Others on the field dropped to the ground or ran for cover, hiding until police shot the gunman.
But following Garrett’s imaginary script, it would be the congressional ballplayers themselves whipping out their weapons, felling the shooter and quickly ending the attack. It’s a scene so farfetched that it belongs in a Hollywood action movie.
Real-life gunfights don’t unfold that way. They are scary, chaotic and sloppy. Bullets, even those fired by trained law enforcement officers, fly all over the place.
The scenario that always thrills me is the idea of arming everyone in a movie theater. Nothing says improved safety like a few hundred keyed up action movie viewers letting fly in the dark.
Christine Emba is in favor of some people talking less in the Senate … the ones trying to shut up all the women.
Ah, women. How does one bear their hysterical arguments and constant chatter?
One might assume that these kinds of gripes are relics of some mustachioed misogynist of yore, but in fact they’re far from obsolete. The difference is that today the stereotyping is usually only hinted at. When explicit feelings slip out, we often don’t know quite what to do with them.
Such was the case in recent days. After being repeatedly interrupted by her male Senate Intelligence Committee colleagues during her probing of Justice Department leaders Rod J. Rosenstein last week and Jeff Sessions this Tuesday, Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) was accused by a pro-Trump talking head of being “hysterical” in her questioning of the stunningly evasive attorney general.
The only person “hysterical” in that hearing was Sessions, who was wilting under Harris’ effective, rapid-fire, prosecutorial questioning. Good thing Cornyn was there to literally play defense attorney.
... if a female member of Congress is willing to press hard to get answers and results, shouldn’t she be celebrated for it? In men, such intensity is read as effectiveness; in women, it’s seen as irrationality. Yet in a 2001 survey of members of Congress, the top reason female legislators ran for office was to effect social change. The No. 1 reason for men? They had always wanted to. An emotional commitment to progress sounds better than dispassionate ego-stroking any day. Prizing results over status isn’t irrational — it’s correct.
Think about the last guy you worked for who was an executive VP because being executive VP was his goal. How effective a leader was that guy?
Aminatou Sow joins the conversation about men who don’t want one.
We get it. Women talk too damn much. But men? Men are patient and stoic listeners. Strong, silent, brooding types. All of them. Any woman who has regular interactions with a man will tell you how viscerally untrue and laughable is the assertion that we talk more than they do.
Events of the past week have made this all too clear. Take, for example, the thrilling performance from Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), who — before her interruption — used her skills as a former prosecutor to expertly set traps for Attorney General Jeff Sessions and demand hard answers at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday. The optics of her older, very white, male colleagues shutting her down, however, were not great — quite maddening, actually.
And one of the most maddening parts is that the men doing it don’t have a clue how they looked doing this. They think they were patient, stoic, and so on.
Surely these giants in the Senate were not threatened by a woman simply asking questions? She didn’t take up more time than anyone else, but she was accused of not being “courteous” enough and admonished to be nicer. This power dynamic is one that is very familiar to many women of color.
Uppity? Was she uppity?
Ruth Marcus takes a torch to the “Witch Hunt.”
It’s come to this, on his 146th day in office: The president, under investigation for obstruction of justice, attacked his own deputy attorney general for orchestrating a “witch hunt” against him.
Sometimes my role as a columnist is to advise readers not to overreact, to maintain perspective. Today my advice is to buckle up. Brace yourselves.
Don’t tell me the ride is going to get more bumpy.
I’m not sure for what, exactly. President Trump firing Rod J. Rosenstein or taking moves that would force the deputy attorney general, and perhaps others, to quit? Firing special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, whose probe has pushed Trump to this frenzied state? Using his pardon power in an effort to shut down the investigation, on the theory that Mueller would then have nothing left to probe? Pardoning himself, a move of contested legality that even Richard Nixon balked at? Facing impeachment proceedings, however unlikely that may be with a Republican-controlled Congress?
That any of these seem within the realm of possibility is the measure of how unsettled, and unsettling, this moment is. Actually, that’s an understatement. This situation is alarming in a way I have never experienced in almost four decades here.
As I (three hours late) finishing up this morning, up comes the first of the day’s entries on the war of the Trump regime against the Trump regime.
That ellipses will surely get filled in … or not.
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III has his own column in the Washington Post today, in which he argues that America just is not mean enough to enough people.
… federal drug prosecutions went down dramatically — from 2011 to 2016, federal prosecutions fell by 23 percent. Meanwhile, the average sentence length for a convicted federal drug offender decreased 18 percent from 2009 to 2016.
And, being the master of if A happened, it must have caused B ...
Before that policy change, the violent crime rate in the United States had fallen steadily for two decades, reaching half of what it was in 1991. Within one year after the Justice Department softened its approach to drug offenders, the trend of decreasing violent crime reversed. In 2015, the United States suffered the largest single-year increase in the overall violent crime rate since 1991.
I think that’s plenty. Did violent crime go up in 2015? Why yes, it was up 3.9 percent from 2014 — though property crimes, often associated with drug users desperate for money, were down 2.6 percent. That puts the 2015 rate at 372.6 offenses per 100,000 inhabitants, making it the worst year since … 2012, and almost dead even with 2013. Sessions’ pretense that the rate has fallen “steadily” for decades aside from this one-year blip is also an outright lie. There are multiple years that show increases over the previous year.
Richard Wolffe has, coincidentally enough, a column about Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.
Jeff Sessions is an oft-misunderstood man. Time and again, he has found himself the innocent victim of dishonorable accusations that he, a plainly honorable southern gentleman, should never have to suffer. Time and again, he has been afflicted by mysterious memory loss that renders him incapable of recollecting important facts about his own honorable conduct.
Time and again, his many critics fail to understand his selfless commitment to the law, to ethics and to the United States itself.
It was tragic. Just tragic. Especially the part where Kamala Harris seemed to be the only one who didn’t let Sessions protests about his “honor” act as a brake to questioning.
Who could expect this fine man to live by the common standards of recusal? It’s quite outrageous to think that recusal from the Russia investigation means he had to recuse himself from firing someone for the Russia investigation.
The normal rules do not apply to Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.
The New York Times on the world, minus one.
Many governments must be thinking along the same lines, but few have spelled it out so clearly. Germany did, when Chancellor Angela Merkel said, “The times in which we could rely fully on others — they are somewhat over.” Now Canada, a country tightly bound to its neighbor by history, alliance and the longest border in the world, has declared the need to recognize that the United States is relinquishing its role as the “indispensable nation.”
“The fact that our friend and ally has come to question the very worth of its mantle of global leadership puts into sharper focus the need for the rest of us to set our own clear and sovereign course,” Canada’s foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, told her Parliament this month.
Oh Brave New World that has such nations sitting on the sidelines pouting about “witch hunts.”
Sarah Leonard on young voters, old socialists.
At 68, Jeremy Corbyn has been on the Labour Party’s left flank longer than many of his most enthusiastic supporters — the ones who nearly propelled him to an upset victory in this month’s British general election — have been alive. Bernie Sanders, who won more votes from young people in the 2016 primaries than Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton combined, is 75, and has a demeanor that, honestly, reminds me of my Jewish grandfather. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Communist-backed candidate who, thanks to support from young people, surged in the polls ahead of the first round of France’s presidential election, is a sprightly 65.
What has driven so many young people into passionate political work, sweeping old socialists with old ideas to new heights of popularity? To understand what is going on, you have to realize that politicians like Mr. Sanders and Mr. Corbyn have carried the left-wing torch in a sort of long-distance relay, skipping generations of centrists like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, to hand it to today’s under-35s. And you have to understand why young people are so ready to grab that torch and run with it.
Too many people are assuming that young voters came for Sanders and got socialism on their shoes by accident. They’re ignoring the fact that the current form of capitalism is damn near played out. With automation leaning over every job—every job—like a grim reaper, and income inequality grossly distorting the system, the road ahead seems to fork between socialism and feudalism. It’s hard to blame the potential serfs if one of those paths seems more attractive.
Apologies for running late this morning.