Political Violence- Just Another Tool In the GOP Toolbox
It's not like Paul Pelosi died or anything
Last week’s attack on Paul Pelosi was neither random nor a crime of opportunity. The attacker was looking for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who wasn’t at home at the time. Paul Pelosi, however, took a beating, suffering a fractured skull, among other serious injuries.
Paul Pelosi’s expected to recover fully, but at age 82, who can say? The worst part is that he ended up being the proxy for a politically-motivated attack meant for his wife. It doesn’t take much to believe that provocative Right-wing rhetoric was behind this heinous act, and the only surprise may be that more of these attacks haven’t occurred.
The most shocking aspect of the aftermath has been the reaction of many on the Far-Right. They seem amused by it, as if Paul Pelosi had it coming because he’s married to the Speaker of the House.
Charlie Kirk said that someone should bail out Paul Pelosi’s attacker. I wonder if he’d be doing the same if an unhinged Liberal had attacked Sen.Mitch McConnell (R-KY)?
And then there’s Donald Trump, Jr., who wouldn’t know the difference between “class” and “ass” if you lent him a dictionary and an etiquette expert.
Donald Trump Jr. appears to think it’s funny.
Late Sunday night, Trump Jr. shared an image on social media of a hammer and a pair of underwear with the words “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.” Trump Jr. wrote: “The Internet remains undefeated.” (Sidebar: I’m not going to share a link to Trump Jr.’s post. You can find it on the internet if you so choose.)
Which, even by the low standards set by the eldest son of former President Donald Trump, is egregiously bad. But, unfortunately, not unexpected.
Trump Jr., even more so than his famous father, has reveled in the idea that he is the king of the deplorables – someone willing to say and do things that other people want to but are too afraid. Trump Jr.’s MO has always been – as it likely will be for this incident – that he is just joking, and that people need to stop taking themselves so seriously. He’s the cool guy who doesn’t ever get offended while the rest of us are the squares who are forever on outrage watch.
But stop and consider what Trump Jr. is mocking here. An elderly man was violently attacked in his own home. He was injured badly enough that he had to undergo surgery. The intruder who attacked him seemed to also be after the speaker of the House. The man alleged of attacking Pelosi had also shared a variety of conspiracy theories – about the 2020 election and Covid-19, among other things – on social media.
The only right thing to do in this situation is a) condemn the act and b) see what can be done to put better safeguards in place in hopes of keeping this from happening again.
Instead, what Trump Jr. did is make light of it.
Junior is, without a doubt, a Grade A, top-shelf, first-class, USDA Prime asshole. He decided to make light of an act of terrorism that left the husband of the Speaker of the House in the hospital with a fractured skull. All because he deplores her politics.
What a piece of shit, eh?
And then there’s Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who tried to, well, I don’t even know what he was doing because he came off as almost as big an asshole as Donald Trump, Jr. That’s hard to imagine, but Youngkin almost pulled it off.
Virginia Democrats ripped Youngkin for his remarks about the assault during a rally later that day for congressional candidate Yesli Vega, reported the Free Lance-Star.
“Speaker Pelosi’s husband — they had a break-in last night in their house, and he was assaulted," Youngkin said at the event. "There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re going to send her back to be with him in California. That’s what we’re going to go do.”
Youngkin later condemned the assault during an appearance on Newsmax and wished Paul Pelosi a full recovery, but Democrats in his state harshly criticized his remarks.
As well they should have. An attack such as the one on Paul Pelosi shouldn’t be a moment for partisan verbal broadsides. Indeed, there should be only one response from both sides of the aisle: A constant, uniform denunciation of politically-motivated violence and a wish for Paul Pelosi’s speedy recovery.
Arizona GOP and Trump clone Kari Lake joked about the Pelosi home “not having a lot of protection.” WTF is wrong with her? Is cruelty now part of the GOP toolbox? As if we don’t already know the answer.
Youngkin, Lake, and Trump, Jr. know better, but like so many Republicans today, they lack the humanity gene. Democrats are “less than” and deserve whatever bad things happen to them. Youngkin and other GOP stalwarts aren’t about to shed a tear over them.
And that’s the problem.
WTF is wrong with these heartless maroons? Is it because Nancy Pelosi has a “D” behind her name? Does that somehow render her and her husband unworthy of basic human compassion and kindness?
If the victim of this horrific attack were a Republican, the weeping and gnashing of teeth would be heard from San Francisco to Georgetown and back again. There would be demands for greater security, and these same GOP stalwarts would decry the horrific decline in civility and comity in American society.
Worse, they’d be blaming cruel, heartless Liberal for the decline and fall of Western civilization.
Never mind, of course, that they’ve been fueling 99.3% of that decline and failed to acknowledge that words have meaning. So while some of their own have called for ACTUAL violence, they can’t claim to be surprised that some of their more unbalanced followers have taken them at their word.
The Paul Pelosi attack last week genuinely horrified Republicans. Oh, they weren't that disturbed that an 82-year-old man was almost beaten to death with a hammer. That's apparently a laugh riot. No, they're offended that anyone would associate Pelosi's attacker, David Wayne DePape, with all the respectable Republicans who hate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Sunday, known liar Ted Cruz tweeted simply "truth" — a concept he couldn't identify in a lineup — in response to a post from someone who wrote, "I don’t know what the hell happened at Nancy Pelosi’s house and I suspect none of us will ever know for sure. I do know that trying to paint a hippie nudist from Berkley as some king of militant right winger is absurd and will always be absurd."
But we do know what happened at the Pelosi house last Friday. It's not a huge mystery, despite Republican attempts to craft a second act "Law & Order" twist. Republicans are trying to disavow DePape but not just because he's an attempted murderer. They're pretending an unhinged white guy obsessed with conspiracy theories doesn't fit the MAGA profile, but in reality, many white two-time Obama voters fell into QAnon's mental briar patch. Republicans have embraced those voters while kicking Liz Cheney to the curb. This is who they are now.
“AN” obsessed White guy? Today’s GOP is a party built of, by, and for obsessed White guys. They’re the angry, undereducated, middle-aged White Conservative Christian heterosexuals less upset that they might be missing out on something than that The Other might be getting something they don’t “deserve.”
Why feed people the truth when lies and gaslighting are SO much more effective?
This isn't some light switch moment, though. Republicans have been terrible for as long as I can remember. There were all sort of rumors about Hillary Clinton murdering Vince Foster like Keyser Soze. Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was barely a twinkle in his mother's flatulence during those wild Weekly World News days but he's picked up the fake news baton. Monday, on his podcast, Kirk called DePape a "gay schizophrenic nudist." None of those traits are illegal even at the same time, but he suggested that DePape might confirm all the "gay tryst gone wrong" rumors if he wasn't locked up. Kirk wondered why someone who'd tried to kill an old man hadn't been released on bail. Despite the Fox News rhetoric, Democratic prosecutors aren't in the habit of releasing clearly unhinged attempted murderers….
California Gov. Gavin Newsom called out the "sewage" that Republican politicians amplify online and on TV. They see the impact but they don't care because it drives their supporters to the polls.
Dr. Frankenstein had his problems, but he at least accepted enough responsibility for his actions to join the hunt for his monster that was killing half the country side. He didn't make jokes in bars about the little girl the monster drowned. "Guess she couldn't swim! Hey ho!"
Republicans will never break down and cry, "What have I done?" They'll only laugh while the monster they created kills us all.
Republicans have proudly created their own Frankenstein monster. Now it’s ravaging the countryside and demonstrating the provenance and sagacity of the Law of Unintended Consequences. And they’re laughing as they push their voters to the polls. The consequences that should be their responsibility hang on their conscience for not even a nanosecond.
For the means surely justifies the end, do they not? When you have no conscience or moral center, victory by any means becomes the mantra. Indeed, Republicans are thrilled at the results generated by their lies and propaganda. They make take a majority in the House and they have a puncher’s chance of doing the same in the Senate. Particularly if they secure a minority in the House, chaos is sure to ensue come January.
This is not what America should be. Yet this is the America Republicans have created, starting with the 1994 Republican Revolution that swept Newt Gingrich into power as the Speaker of the House. Gingrich preached the doctrine of slash and burn, that compromise was capitulation, and that comity was the enemy of total victory. Democrats are the enemy and must be ground to dust- metaphorically speaking, of course. Or perhaps not, if you listen to some Republican stalwarts.
An 82-year-old man sustains a skull fracture from a predawn home invasion, and you think it’s funny? Or that it’s fodder for another dumb conspiracy theory?
What did you do with your humanity? Where did you mislay your souls? Have you no sense of decency at long last? One is tempted to say that in your response to last Friday morning’s attack on Paul Pelosi, many of you on the political right have hit rock bottom. But you lot have a knack for excavating depths that would make the Mole Man think twice, so let’s just content ourselves with saying that you’ve struck a new low.
Politics is not life, and it certainly shouldn’t be a zero-sum, Hunger Games-style competition in which competitors unfortunately enough to come up short forfeit their lives.
Republicans seem to have forgotten that all politics is about is determining the rules that we agree to live by. But the moral McCarthyism the GOP has adopted is as reprehensible as it is senseless. This should be what America is about.
One would think this would be a moment for you to set politics aside, to offer words of consolation, comfort – and thanks that Pelosi is expected to make a full recovery. But one would be wrong. While some of you — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, former Vice President Mike Pence among them — offered well wishes, others were unable to clear even that low moral bar.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin could not resist telling an audience that they would send Pelosi back to California to join her husband. How Virginia voters are supposed to send a California representative anywhere, he did not say. In Arizona, gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake mocked that Pelosi’s home doesn’t have enough protection. And a clutch of conservative luminaries — Donald Trump Jr., Dinesh D’Souza and Elon Musk among them, promoted a bizarre viral theory that the attack was actually a fight between gay lovers.
So yeah, what is wrong with you? When did you run over your moral compass with a truck?
Over the past 28 years, the characters and the movements have changed, but the ethos has remained largely intact. Give no quarter, show no mercy, and attack, attack, attack!!! Personal insults, character assassination, and unfounded accusations became- and remain- the coin of the realm for Republicans.
And we are all- regardless of which side of the ideological fence you call home- poorer for it.
"If the victim of this horrific attack were a Republican, the weeping and gnashing of teeth would be heard from San Francisco to Georgetown and back again. There would be demands for greater security, and these same GOP stalwarts would decry the horrific decline in civility and comity in American society."
-- Hell, they completely delaminated because there were peaceful protestors outside the residence of Justice Beer-Rapist.
What the neo-Fascists are doing is known as "stochastic terrorism."