27 October 2018

Guns, bombs, and President Trump’s rhetoric

Keep in mind this number: 328,880,000. That’s the current population of the United States. Within it, there’s considerable variation, including a handful of murderous lunatics, two of whom made themselves known this week.

Today, a gunman, alleged to be Robert Bowers, a known anti-Semite, killed at least 11 and wounded at least six at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, leading President Trump to witlessly opine that had an armed guard been present, less blood would have been spilled. That’s doubtful. Several of the wounded were police officers. There are unconfirmed reports that anti-immigration rhetoric fueled the killer’s rampage.

Earlier this week, a man in Florida, Cesar Sayoc, a bodybuilder with a long history of hostile encounters with law enforcement and troubling behavior, was arrested and charged with sending pipe bombs to leading opponents of President Trump, among them Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and even the actor Robert DeNiro. The bombs contained explosive material, but none exploded; it’s possible they were intended only to scare the bejesus out of people.

A writer at the Washington Post accused President Trump of inciting Sayoc’s behavior. Words do have consequences. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be important. But establishing a direct link between Trump’s rhetoric and the Pittsburgh gunman and the Florida bombmaker is not nearly as easy as it seems. Trump’s rough rhetoric reaches tens of millions of Americans who agree with him on the issues, but they do not shoot up synagogues and churches, or send pipe bombs to his detractors.

Viewing the Pittsburgh shootings and the attempted bombings as political acts and as proof that Trump’s coarse and thuggish rhetoric is inciting violence ignores the demons that these men fought most of their lives. They became obsessed with a subject. Their obsessions’ intensity grew beyond any normal bound, consuming rational judgment and self-restraint. Eventually they ran amok. Sayoc’s obsession was right wing politics, but it could have been something else. At some point, something would have triggered his misbehavior. Intensity, not political content, is the key variable in this case.

Focusing on these incidents diverts attention from the damage that President Trump’s mean-spirited demagoguery does to our ability to resolve our differences peacefully. His rhetoric normalizes incivility, personalizing policy differences until a discussion of policy becomes a fight over personal differences. Instead of appealing to our better angels, he panders to our darker selves, belittling our best behavior and values while blessing our worse impulses. He practices divide and conquer, not unite and empower. His approach produces rowdiness at rallies, fisticuffs in saloons, demands that black men be arrested for walking in white neighborhoods, and contempt for decent people struggling to make ends meet. That’s what should concern us most, and concern us greatly.

But he’s no more responsible for the murders in Pittsburgh and the pipe bombs sent to his political opponents than Bernie Sanders was responsible for the madman who shot up the Republicans practicing for the annual Congressional baseball game.