It wasn’t Nancy Pelosi’s fault.
Or Chuck Schumer’s or Hillary Clinton’s.
Or Rachel Maddow’s.
It wasn’t about civil discourse or political division or how ruthless our politics have supposedly become.
It was about one crazy bastard who, from the cesspool of his decaying life and rabid hatreds, decided to slaughter his fellow citizens. It was an attack upon our Republic and common citizenship, an effort by one to use violence to defeat the votes of others.
We saw this at the Pan-American Exhibition, and at Ford’s Theater, and at the Texas School Book Depository.
It’s not about us, it’s about him.
Certainly, our politics are shrill. Yes, our differences are stark. But, no, this wasn’t our fault.
It wasn’t the fault of those of us who are Republicans, and it wasn’t the fault of those of us who are Democrats. The fact that he rolled in the vitriol of the left does not mean that his actions were a consequence of that vitriol. The fact he used Facebook as a platform for rage does not mean that the rage is to blame.
Don’t get me wrong. I am a Republican and a conservative. I think the dogma of progressive Democrats is poisonous to our liberty and damaging to our society. Progressive attempts to nullify the last election strike me as essentially treasonous. The hatespeech of the left, against police officers in recent years and Republican voters in recent months, is noxious and wrong.
But it is not to blame.
The media war on Trump did not cause that man to open fire on the baseball players. It wasn’t Hillary’s whining or Comey’s grandstanding.
Because none of those things are new or out of the ordinary, and none of those things are unique to this man.
American politics, as any reading of history immediately shows, have always been this bitter and more. The “Era of Good Feeling” lasted for two years and was in the early 1800s. At every other turn, we have lurched forward as a Republic pretty sure that our neighbor was a traitorous monster out to steal our liberty. It has never been any different.
In our lifetimes, the enmity between the right and the left has been a constant.
And so has been our forward progress.
In an odd irony of liberty, the dynamic tension of passionately competing political philosophies has made us better. We’ve gone left when we’ve needed it and we’ve gone right when we’ve needed it, and the struggle between the two has helped us know, electorally, when we’ve needed what. Conservatives have always hated progressives and progressives have always hated conservatives.
This is our normal.
And normal people don’t respond to it with violence.
Look at the numbers. It is likely that about one-third of Americans share the deep disappointment in the recent election that some say motivated the ballpark assassin. That means that some 100 million Americans are deeply disgusted by Trump and the Republicans. This guy wasn’t the only progressive troll on Facebook, and he wasn’t the only guy watching Maddow in his underwear. He wasn’t the only member of The Resistance.
But he’s the only one who picked up a gun.
The others just go about their lives. Their feelings are inflamed, but their actions are lawful. They are citizens of a Republic, and they conduct themselves accordingly. They are normal.
I hate the way they vote and the way they think, and I suspect they would say the same about me, but they are the norm and he is the exception.
And such a rare and obscure exception as to be useless in a fair analysis of what’s right and what’s wrong. Put another way, the conduct of this outlier does not teach us anything about us. His actions are not an insight into the American heart or an indictment of the American character.
He did this, and he did this alone.
Whatever aspect of evil or insanity drove his actions used his politics as an excuse – but it did not arise from his politics. If it did, if strident political belief drove people to physically attack one another, there’d be Republicans and Democrats shooting one another in the streets. If shrill and uncivil politics caused violence, every day would be an Antietam.
But it’s not.
So they don’t.
And we should reject the claim that they do.
Yes, we need more love your neighbor as yourself. And we need more do unto others as you would have others do unto you. But we need not be ashamed of our long-standing political divisions or retreat from the firmness of our views. Differences of opinion are the seedbed of strength. Hamilton and Adams fought, and so should we.
It’s not Nancy Pelosi’s fault.
It’s the fault of the guy who pulled the trigger.