With the current administration’s demonetization of the Democratic Party, they are the ones creating a milieu of violence.
Dan Rather and others saw the violence originate with Trump in 2020.
Where do we go from here, unfortunately we have a divider in Chief and not a United.
As journalists, we have long been taught that writing a comprehensive news story requires answering the five Ws. Who, what, when, and where are the easy ones. It’s that last one, the why, that is almost always the most difficult to answer.
In some cases, motivation for an act, especially a murder, may never be known. How does one get to the point of purposely killing another person?
In cases of political violence, some in our country just want to retaliate — violence meeting violence, the biblical eye for an eye. Others, those who care to learn from abhorrent behavior so society can be made better, ask questions and seek knowledge.
One way to help us with our hopes for understanding is to turn to those, including academics, who study political violence. The headline from their current research: As a country, we have a big problem, and it’s getting worse.
During the first six months of the year, there were 150 politically motivated attacks, almost twice as many as the same period last year.
On New Year’s Day, 14 people were killed when a radicalized Muslim-American drove a truck into a crowd in New Orleans. In April, the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion was firebombed with Governor Josh Shapiro’s family inside, because of Shapiro’s stance on the war in Gaza. The following month, two Israeli embassy workers were killed in a hate crime. In June, a Christian nationalist assassinated one Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota and injured a second. In August, a Covid vaccine conspiracy theorist killed a police officer and shot dozens of rounds at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta. And last week, the killing of Charlie Kirk.
Over the past five years, we have seen a plot to assassinate a Supreme Court justice and one to kidnap the speaker of the House. There were two assassination attempts on then-candidate Donald Trump and a deadly attack on the Capitol incited by then-president Trump.
Sean Westwood of the Polarization Research Lab characterized what is happening in America as “pouring poison into the public well.” Those in power are the ones pouring.
A political leader’s reaction to political violence is a test of character. It is a test that Donald Trump has failed. He exploits others’ violent acts to further his own vengeful agenda. At a time when our leadership should be seeking unity, Trump is using Kirk’s killing as a call to arms for his supporters. “We have radical left lunatics out there and we just have to beat the hell out of them,” the president said at the White House last week.