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Hello Fellow Democrats,
The news cycle last week and this past weekend was dominated by the news that reactionary political activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated. I can well remember November of 1963, when I was sitting in a high school classroom when word reached me and my fellow students that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. That’s the first political assassination that I can personally recall. It was less than two hours before the alleged assassin was identified. It was a lone individual by the name of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Four and a half years later I was a college student, just starting work on Bobby Kennedy’s 1968 campaign for President, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. It took a little over two weeks before Dr. King’s assassin was identified, once again a lone individual named James Earl Ray.
Two months and one day after MLK’s death, my own hero was shot to death. Although some controversy surrounds the death of Robert F. Kennedy, the official word is that Bobby was killed by Sirhan Sirhan, once again a lone assassin.
I mention those three assassinations because, like several attempted assassination attempts that followed in the half-century that followed them, each was quickly determined to be the crime of one individual. Nobody blamed Republicans as a group for JFK’s death. Nobody blamed southern racists as a group for King’s. Nobody blamed his political opponents for Bobby’s. But, within minutes of the news of Charlie Kirk being assassinated hitting the airwaves President Trump was loudly and viciously blaming “the radical left”. Even before photographs of the alleged shooter were released to the public some of Trump’s MAGA supporters were calling for “all-out war” on Democrats. Before Tyler Robinson was identified as the “likely shooter”, and long before any of his political views were known, one MAGA political figure was calling for the Democratic Party to be declared a “terrorist organization” and eradicated.
It was the same sort of scenario that had played out last year when a young man, who it later turned out to be a Republican, allegedly took a shot at Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania. “Blame the Democrats! It’s all because of the Radical Left” became the mantra of the MAGA faithful. Trump and his MAGA devotees don’t see these things as the wrongheaded acts of an individual. They blame Democrats in general or specifically the “Radical Left”, which they define as everyone who doesn’t agree with Trump.
This time, however, it’s a little bit different. At least one Republican elected official has spoken reasonably. In the aftermath of the shooting, shortly into the investigation, Utah Governor Spencer Cox made an impassioned plea for common sense to prevail. "We can return violence with fire and violence. We can return hate with hate. And that's the problem with political violence, is it metastasizes, because we can always point the finger at the other side, and at some point we have to find an off-ramp, or it's going to get much, much worse. These are choices that we can make," Cox said.
As Chair of the National Governors Association Cox has teamed up with governors and mayors of both parties in a push to tone down the rhetoric and put an end to the violence. They’ve started a movement called “Disagree Better”, which encourages both sides to relearn how to “agree to disagree” without taking differences and disagreements to the level of violent action.
We, as Democrats, need to do a better job of trying to rationally discuss our differences with our MAGA family members, friends and neighbors. I say that with the full realization that the vast majority of the rhetoric that incites violence comes from the right, and it’s difficult to say, “let’s have a meaningful conversation” when the person on the other side of the discussion is saying “I really want to kill you”, but we need to try. Ultimately, the real change won’t come until the person at the top of the MAGA movement agrees that we need to “Disagree Better” and stops the name-calling and stops inciting his own followers to violent action, but we, as Democrats, need to try. We need to do our best to bring rationality back to the political arena.
Stand Up! Push Back! Engage Peaceably!
Bill
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