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It’s characteristic of the times in which we live, when information and images are transmitted instantaneously, that thoughtful reflection rarely precedes wide dissemination.
But the line of recklessness may have been crossed with the comments of some public officials reacting to the mbadacre of 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue, as well as a series of apparent pipe bombs mailed to high-profile people in politics and the media.
Politicians rushed to blame President Donald Trump for inspiring the violent attacks. Locally, Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer suggested a connection between the president’s statement at a rally that he is “a nationalist” and what Feuer called “consequences.” Feuer, who was on the City Council at the time of the 1999 shooting at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills, which wounded three children and two staff members, said that was “a different moment” in the country.
The shooter in that incident stated that his motive was to send “a wakeup call to America to kill Jews.” The accused shooter in Pittsburgh screamed that “All Jews must die.” What was different? Only the president of the United States.
President Trump spoke out against the “scourge of anti-Semitism,” but some critics didn’t let that get in the way of blaming the president, whose daughter and grandchildren are Jewish, for inspiring anti-Semitic violence.
Trump was also criticized for his statement that the outcome of the Pittsburgh incident might have been different “if they had protection inside” the synagogue.
But he wasn’t the only politician to bring up the issue of gun ownership in response to the shooting. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi announced in her statement about the shooting that “Congress must finally act on commonsense gun violence prevention legislation.”
Anti-Semitic violence isn’t new, isn’t Trump’s fault and has never been stopped by any kind of commonsense legislation.
The arrest of a Florida man for mailing pipe-bomb devices to prominent Democrats and to CNN has also prompted a wave of finger-pointing over political rhetoric said to have inspired it.
It may be a mistake to search for a political motive for a violent attack as if it’s part of a rational debate. A more likely explanation came from a family attorney who said he believed the mail-bombing suspect is mentally ill, and from the manager of a restaurant where the suspect worked for a few months. “He was crazed,” she said.
It’s fair to debate the role of a president’s words in shaping public opinion. It isn’t fair to blame political rhetoric alone or predominantly for the violent acts of individuals who are unstable or consumed by irrational hatred.
While we would like to see President Trump more consistently speak in a manner that is civil and not combative, efforts to blame the rhetoric of any particular political figure for the violent actions of unhinged individuals only perpetuate further polarization.
Rather than devolve into finger-pointing for political gain, we should not forget that those who make the jump from rhetoric to violence are ultimately responsible for their own actions. At the same time, we should all reflect on the state of political discourse in general.
The suspects in Pittsburgh and Florida will face justice in the courts. Although no one in politics is responsible for causing their actions, this is a good time for everyone in public life to consider that more will be accomplished for the nation if people speak to each other with something resembling civility.
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