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Morain

11/03/22

11/2/2022

Although its safety mechanisms have improved, farming is still considered America’s most dangerous major occupation.

Government service may fast overtake it.

The recent attack on Paul Pelosi, 82-year-old husband of Nancy Pelosi, in their San Francisco home sadly doesn’t come as much of a surprise. The alleged attacker, a 42-year-old Far Right guy, apparently thinks of Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues as The Enemy. He had posted threats against Democratic leaders for some time, and had possession of zip ties, rope, tape, and two hammers, among other paraphernalia.

(I say “alleged attacker” because that’s what journalists are supposed to say pending the outcome of a trial. In this case police witnessed the attacker, who was struggling over the hammer with Pelosi, rip it away from him and hit him on the head with it several times. The “alleged” is pretty much superfluous.)

He used one of the hammers to fracture Paul Pelosi’s skull. He told officers he planned to tie up Nancy Pelosi and break her kneecaps, so she would have to return to Congress in a wheelchair as a warning to her side of the aisle.

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This week many members of Congress, from both parties, expressed their shock at the attack and best wishes for the Pelosis. And then several Republican office-seekers and supporters made jokes about the Pelosi attack. 

Just another day in the service of political extremism in the USA. 

I just don’t get it.

Our nation’s public servants were victims of 9,600 threats in 2021. That’s 1,000 more than in 2020. I’m guessing the total will rise even higher this year.

It’s not hard to trace the violence. Airways, social media, and political rallies teem with threats, some veiled and some not so much, against officeholders in The Other Party. 

These days the threats, and the actual violence, come mostly from the Far Right. In days past the Far Left had its turn. Remember the 2017 shooting that wounded Steve Scalise who was practicing baseball with his Republican colleagues? Scalise is Minority Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives. The shooter was a leftist intent on killing Republicans.

Six years earlier, in 2011, Democratic Representative Gabrielle (Gabby) Giffords of Arizona was shot in the face in Tucson and permanently damaged. The shooter, who killed six other people at the scene, reportedly had mental issues. Police interviewers discovered that Giffords was his main target. He apparently thought that officials were out to get him. 

In 1954 a group of Puerto Rican political extremists shot up the U.S. House of Representatives, wounding five Congressmen including Ben Jensen, whose district included Greene County.

Political violence pervades America’s history. Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey, in 1804. They were bitter political rivals, but they fought their duel according to the informally accepted rules of the time. It wasn’t a one-sided surprise attack.

Republican Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, after an anti-slavery speech on the Senate floor in 1856, was severely beaten with a cane by Democratic Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina. It took Sumner several years to recover and return to the Senate floor.

We’ve had four presidential assassinations: Republican Abraham Lincoln in 1865 by a Southern sympathizer, Republican James A. Garfield in 1881 by an unhappy office-seeker, Republican William McKinley in 1901 by an anarchist, and Democrat John F. Kennedy in 1963 by a Marxist who had returned to the U.S. after years of living in the Soviet Union.

Other Presidents were wounded, or nearly so, by would-be assassins: Andrew Jackson (in a duel), Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford.

U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer escaped injury in 1919 when an anarchist set off a bomb on his front porch in the Georgetown district of Washington, DC.

Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was fatally shot in 1933 in that city, by a bullet apparently intended for President Roosevelt.

Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was fatally shot in 1968 in Los Angeles by a Palestinian who resented Bobby’s support of Israel.

Also in 1972, George Wallace, Governor of Alabama and presidential candidate, was shot and paralyzed from the waist down by a man who apparently was seeking fame. His preferred target was President Richard Nixon.

Huey Long, former Governor and then U.S. Senator from Louisiana and a likely presidential candidate, was shot and killed in 1935 by the relative of a Louisiana elected official whom Long had engineered out of office through gerrymandering.

George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, was fatally shot in 1967 by a disgruntled former member of the party.

Harvey Milk, a San Francisco Supervisor who was the first openly gay man to be elected to office in that city, was shot and killed in 1978 by a disgruntled former Supervisor who opposed Milk’s attempts to enact legal protections for homosexuals.

In 1987 Mayor Edward King of Mount Pleasant, Iowa, was shot and killed by a resident unhappy with a sewer backup in his basement.

And on Jan. 6, 2021, we witnessed the attack on the U.S. Capitol, complete with its verbal threats against members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence.

Today, social media and other forms of electronic communication make the threats of political violence immeasurably more ominous. Elon Musk, who recently purchased the Twitter platform, has reportedly indicated he plans to eliminate some of the corporation’s guardrails against potentially threatening tweets. 

Given the current political atmosphere, that could be catastrophic. QAnon, for example, once thought of as just a kooky far-right political cult, has morphed into a true threat to non-conservative public officials. Its lifeblood is social media.

There’s no doubt the constant barrage of verbal, print and electronic attacks against the political Left, with Nancy Pelosi as the prime target, led to Paul Pelosi’s broken skull. And sadly there’s little doubt that after the obligatory Republican shower of thoughts and prayers for Mr. Pelosi, the vicious and dangerous campaign attacks on his wife will continue.

Politics in America is coarser today, in my opinion, than at any time in the nation’s past, with the exception of the 1850s just before the Civil War. And there’s no apparent path to return to more civil political discourse. The saner members of the political parties should publicly rebuke their respective extremists, and withhold support from them, but that’s not likely to happen.

It’s inexcusable. And we haven’t seen the last of it. ♦

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