Ever since the attempt on President Trump's life last year, I've had a sense that the acceptance of violence as part of our political process was growing in the country.
It was just a feeling that perhaps you shared, fed by outrageous public remarks by far too many people who should know better:
- It came out that Jay Jones, a statewide candidate in Virginia, had fantasized about killing his political opponent and children. Still, he was elected the state's new attorney general.
- Posing with a baseball bat in hand, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (NY-8) urged followers to "fight in the streets."
- Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called on people to "forcefully rise up."
- California Gov. Gavin Newsom said, “I’m going to punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.”
Perhaps you've noticed by now that all these extreme statements and numerous others were uttered by Democrats. And not just by angry demonstrators. These are the folks who, not too long ago, sought to criminalize hate speech. And now they're loudly proclaiming their own version.
Everyone needs to tone everything down, whatever the topic that ignites the anger — illegal immigrants, foreign policy, government cuts, an abiding hate for the man who helped us dodge Biden 2.0, etc.
Right, left, center, street thug, or Uncle Carl at the Sunday dinner table need to realize that decisions to utter words, like all the other decisions in life, have consequences. And each violent remark raises the level of what can seem to be acceptable in a civil society that once condemned such harsh talk, no matter how disagreeable it might sound.
Yes, Trump Derangement Syndrome is far too widespread. Such anger is completely detached from reality or reason. But it's no excuse for raising the decibel level of discourse. I lived through the Vietnam War era when opposition got extreme, and we had public murders of a president, his brother, who was a senator, a revered minister, and an attempt on a sitting governor.
Gallup reports:
Larger majorities of Americans than in the past believe that both the Democratic and Republican parties and their supporters have gone too far in using inflammatory language to criticize their opponents.
After this year's assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, a Politico poll reports that a significant majority of 55 percent now expects political violence to increase even more:
It’s a view held by majorities of Americans all across lines like gender, age, party affiliation and level of education, though Democrats and older voters expressed particular concern.
Perhaps most troubling, a significant minority of the population — 24 percent — believes that there are some instances where violence is justified.
This is ominous and quite concerning. But it's not inevitable. That's the topic of this week's audio commentary, which is now available for listening here:
This week's Sunday column wasn't another column.
It was another in the ongoing series of professional memories from my decades in the business of reporting and writing news. This edition, the 37th in the series, recalls three separate episodes, including the Sunday afternoon in Tokyo when, out of the blue, THE William F. Buckley Jr. telephoned me for help.
No, really!
Just for fun for the Thanksgiving holiday, as the most recent audio commentary, I wrote up a list of my predictions for the news alerts you might hear about during the typically slow news holiday weekend.
Guess what! I was dead-on about at least one of the big holiday stories.
If you want to catch up on some of the previous ones — what it's like inside a wildfire, some famous people I met, the day I drove an Indy car, and the nights I had Paris all to myself — the links to each of them are at the bottom of each one.
