Armstrong Williams – I didn’t want to write this column. Not now. The events of today and the recent past are taking their toll. Those on the Left are rapidly becoming an intolerant political class, and it has to stop.
Today’s shooting of several at a Republican baseball practice is a reflection. It’s a small mirror of the worst of our society, responding to political disagreements and discourse in a violent way. While not all the details of the incident are clear, it appears the shooter was politically motivated in some fashion. At the risk of taking this too far, it has gone too far. And I fear the fomenting by liberals on the left is to blame.
There are simply too many examples that tilt the weight of evidence toward this bias. A Hollywood entertainer, Kathy Griffin, and CNN host decapitates an image of our president and thinks in her own twisted way that is somehow funny?
They label it entertainment, and the rest of us silently weep at such disrespect for the office of the president. Or how about a local theater that props up its own image of Julius Caesar as Donald Trump and then violently murders him? Even in liberal New York City, there doesn’t appear to be any second thoughts regarding this behavior. By the way, this so-called theatric presentation was so tasteless in the eyes of major companies such as Delta Airlines and Bank of America that they each pulled their funding for the theatrical center.
Where’s the decorum? Where is the sense of decency among our fellow man and fellow countrymen and women that we don’t take a second to ponder our actions? Cameras are always rolling. Statements matter. Words matter. Our nation’s leaders on the Left have a responsibility to simmer tensions, not let them boil.
Senator Bernie Sanders accosting a potential OMB deputy for his faith by accusing him of being intolerant is another example. Has an elected official sworn to uphold the Constitution tried to deny the Constitutionally-protected practicing of religion by a government worker simply because he disagreed with that religion? But if he pretends it’s in the defense of a larger body of practicing Muslims that makes it ok, right? Wrong. Sanders knows better. But he also knows that brand of political histrionics raises money and fires up the base. So why change?
We are a nation of laws; of the rule of law. A nation where we each hold a responsibility to lower the temperatures and tempers. And when society is told it is okay to get hysterically mad at this government and this president – that it’s okay to respond passionately about some conviction so deeply held – we miss the mark.
Earlier today congressmen Steve Scalese Majority Whip, staffers, and law enforcement were shot while practicing for a congressional baseball game. When NYC play depicts the president assassinated, or an entertainer holds up the head of a decapitated Trump, are you shocked Congressmen Scalese was shot after being asked by the terrorist whether or not he was a republican.
The 66-year old James Hodgkinson, of Belleville, Illinois was campaign volunteer on Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. He reportedly asked if members were Republican or Democrat before he started shooting. President Trump announced that the shooter died as a result of gunshot wounds.
We can do better. We have to do better.
SF Source Armstrong Williams Jun 2017