We begin today’s roundup with Eugene Robinson’s excellent column at The Washington Post on the “both sides” fallacy when it comes to encouraging hate and violence in this country:
“Both sides” are not responsible for the horrific political terrorism we have seen this past week. Only the right is to blame — starting with President Trump and his complicit enablers in the Republican Party.
They have been playing with fire. It was inevitable that people would get burned. [...] Don’t tell me that “both sides” need to do better. Republicans who remain silent deserve to be swept out of office.
Catherine Rampell adds that it’s not just Trump but the entire Republican Party which enables his destructive behavior:
[I]t’s not unreasonable to believe that the man with the world’s biggest bullhorn could be at least contributing to a climate in which hate crimes and anti-Semitic incidents are increasing. In fact, most Americans believe Trump’s actions as president have encouraged white supremacist groups, according to a new PRRI poll.
But in focusing our anger and debate on Trump, we let so many other Republicans off the hook.
The president is hardly the only elected official who has played footsie with neo-Nazis, far-right thugs and xenophobic conspiracy theorists.
At USA Today, Jill Lawrence says we need presidential leadership again since Trump has no credibility on the issue, and she recounts how past president have dealt with the aftermath of tragedies:
Here is the dilemma: It doesn’t matter what Trump says now. No noble sentiment, no full-throated embrace of American values, will make us believe. There have been too many lies, too many divisions, too much trampling on and shredding of the most basic notions of who we think we are.
For the first time, I'm glad we have such a long windup to our presidential elections. In a matter of weeks, we'll see many Democrats start to emerge and, depending on the midterm results and special counsel Robert Mueller's report, maybe some Republicans as well. With enough will and hope, we should be able to focus on making a future that proves that these past few years are an aberration — a detour from the path we need and want to be on.
Ryan Cooper at The Week explains why the Republican Party has made George Sorors a boogeyman:
Anti-Semitism and other rancid bigotries are thriving on the right because they serve an important political function: They paper over the cracks between the Republican Party elite's unpopular and hideously corrupt policy record, and their voting base of credulous, aging whites who are terrified of change. Elected Republicans are, as usual, keeping their heads down and hoping for a change of subject. Don't let them get away with it.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof gives a personal perspective on gun violence and the need to take on the NRA:
Why do we Americans kill each other, and ourselves, with guns at such rates? One answer as it relates to the Pittsburgh attack is a toxic brew of hate and bigotry, but the ubiquity of guns leverages hatred into murder. And let’s be blunt: One reason for our country’s paralysis on meaningful action on guns is the National Rifle Association. If we want to learn the lessons of this latest rampage, and try to prevent another one, then let’s understand that saving lives is not just about universal background checks and red flag laws, but also about defanging the N.R.A.
I write this as a former N.R.A. member who grew up with guns on a farm — my 12th birthday present was my own .22 rifle — and I acknowledge that it once was a great organization for shooting enthusiasts and still does important work running safety training programs.
Hero pilot Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger urges people to vote to restore American values this Election Day:
Today, tragically, too many people in power are projecting the worst. Many are cowardly, complicit enablers, acting against the interests of the United States, our allies and democracy; encouraging extremists at home and emboldening our adversaries abroad; and threatening the livability of our planet. Many do not respect the offices they hold; they lack — or disregard — a basic knowledge of history, science and leadership; and they act impulsively, worsening a toxic political environment. [...]
For the first 85 percent of my adult life, I was a registered Republican. But I have always voted as an American. And this critical Election Day, I will do so by voting for leaders committed to rebuilding our common values and not pandering to our basest impulses. [...]
We cannot wait for someone to save us. We must do it ourselves. This Election Day is a crucial opportunity to again demonstrate the best in each of us by doing our duty and voting for leaders who are committed to the values that will unite and protect us. Years from now, when our grandchildren learn about this critical time in our nation’s history, they may ask if we got involved, if we made our voices heard. I know what my answer will be. I hope yours will be “yes.”
Speaking of Election Day, it’s no surprise that Donald Trump is pulling a political stunt to rally his base by sending troops to the border to meet asylum refugees. Here’s analysis by Eric Levitz:
[T]he president of the United States has spent the past several weeks claiming that Democrats are orchestrating an “invasion” of the United States, using a caravan of Central American asylum-seekers, Middle Eastern terrorists, and known criminals as its shock troops.The White House knows that this is a ridiculous lie (one that just so happens to have neo-Nazi undertones). But, as a senior administration official recently told the Daily Beast, “It doesn’t matter if it’s 100 percent accurate. This is the play.”
And so, the president will bring his “play” to a climax right before the midterm elections, by sending 5,200 U.S. troops to the border for no defensible reason...
On a final note, please take some time to read John Cassidy’s provoking piece on the failure of American democratic institutions:
When James Madison proposed the Second Amendment, he wasn’t living in a world where isolated haters could convene online and convince themselves that they were engaged in an apocalyptic struggle much larger than the daily drudgery of their lives. (“I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered,” Bowers wrote in his final social-media post. “Screw your optics, I’m going in.”) The founders didn’t inhabit an environment where deadly weapons of war, such as rifles that can fire dozens of rounds a minute, are mass-produced for private use, and where bomb-making plans are freely available on the Internet. (According to news reports, Bowers owned more than twenty weapons, including the AR-15 rifle he used at the Tree of Life synagogue.)
And, of course, the Founders, who worried greatly about the vulnerability of democracy to populist demagogues, didn’t envision a President like Trump.