Rhetoric or violence?
The quandary of words and wounds
The release of Rep. Steve Scalise from the hospital on July 26 was welcome news some six weeks after the horrific sniper attack on a Republican squad practicing for the annual congressional baseball game at a ballpark in Alexandria, Virginia. Scalise was the most critically wounded of five victims.
It was popular in the days immediately following the shooting to presume that the attack was symptomatic of something wrong with political discourse. Many in both parties promised to try to tone down the rhetoric.
Even conservative rock star Ted Nugent, who once told a concert crowd that Barack Obama should “suck on [his] machine gun,” had a change of heart. “…[A]t the tender age of 69, my wife has convinced me that I just can’t use those harsh terms. I cannot and I will not,” he said. “We have got to be civil to each other.”
(A couple of months later, it’s not clear whether political language has become more temperate, or just numbed by summer doldrums.)
But perhaps that vicious event was only another tragic case of a nut with an assault weapon acting out his imagined grievances.
On the same day as the ballpark attack, a former employee entered the UPS San Francisco Customer Center and shot five people, killing three, and then killed himself. No one to my knowledge tried to find any greater sociopolitical significance in that incident than what was obvious and too common: Angry guy takes a gun and exacts revenge on people he feels have wronged him for something or other.
Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, says it’s a mistake to attribute terrorist violence to “root causes” — which only rationalizes anti-social impulses.
Practicing civility and toning down angry rhetoric may be desirable social ends. But blaming coarse political argument for the violent acts of fanatics is unrealistic, and may be counterproductive — inflaming more vengeful behavior.
That’s not to deny that explicitly inciting violence can cross the line of criminal complicity — for instance, by goading a rabid crowd to “beat the crap” out of a protester. But it’s fair to warn that denying health insurance will result in thousands of deaths or to lament the lives lost to the flow of lethal drugs across the border. Indignation is not incitement.
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Copyright 2017, Lewis J. Perelman
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