Was Last Friday the Day Things Changed?
Not the beginning of the end but perhaps the end of the beginning
By now, just about everyone has heard that Paul Pelosi — husband of the Speaker of the House — was attacked with a hammer early Friday in his San Francisco home. The attacker broke into the home through the french doors in the back of the property and confronted Mr. Pelosi, saying he was looking for Nancy and was willing to wait for her. Mr. Pelosi was able to contact the police and as they were arriving, the attacker forcefully struck him with a hammer. He suffered a fractured skull as well as injuries to his arm and shoulder and is still in Intensive Care. The assailant was taken into custody and has subsequently been charged with both state and federal crimes.
Based upon some sketchy preliminary police reports1, conservative critics of Pelosi and the Democratic party took advantage of the story to push their own narratives. Some of these were echoes of “soft on crime” rhetoric conservatives had used to oust the previous San Francisco district attorney. Some, like Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance, pivoted to the fact that the assailant was “an illegal immigrant” (he entered the US in 2000 from Canada and overstayed his visa). The most vile arguments came from those (like Donald Trump, Jr., Dinesh D’Sousa, and Chief Twit Elon Musk) who claimed (with no evidence) that this was a gay lover’s quarrel gone wrong.2 Even the supposed grown-ups like Glenn Younkin said at a campaign appearance for Kari Lake that they wanted to “send Nancy back to California to care for her husband”. And, not to be left out, the 45th President called into a talk show to say that “he heard that the window was broken from the inside.”3
It seems that years of campaigning on how Pelosi and the Democrats want to destroy the country and turn it into a socialist violent hellhole has a long-term impact. Once you believe your own rhetoric over years, revulsion at the act and compassion for the victim go out the window. The attack on Paul Pelosi just becomes another piece folded into the ongoing narrative.
This week has brought many critics to call out this lack of compassion for those on the right. Echoing Adam Server’s quip that “the cruelty is the point”, Tom Nichols suggests in The Atlantic that we may be at “an inflection point.” He concludes his piece like this:
Sadistic glee in harming others is a sin (at least in my faith). But it is also a social cancer, a rot that can spread quickly and kill the spirit of democracy. If all attempts at reason and all offers of friendship fail, the rest of us should shun those whose dark hearts encourage them to revel in such poison. Unfortunately, millions of our fellow citizens seem poised to vote many such people into power. The darkness is spreading.
Mona Charen, writing in The Bulwark, called out the imaginary “good Republicans”:
The House speaker’s husband was brutally attacked in his home by a hammer-wielding lunatic who was shouting “Where is Nancy?” and most GOP office holders—even the “good Republicans” we’ve been assured will usher us out of Trumpism—failed the test.
Two other comments in Mona’s piece deserve a highlight.
What the hell is wrong with these people? Where has their sense of ordinary decency gone?
and
It’s beginning to look like Republicans go along with Trumpism not because they feel they must, but because they’ve really come to embody it.
Steve Bennen,4 producer for the Rachel Maddow show, wrote this on MSNBC's site:
The test for Republicans is simple. All they have to do is act like decent human beings. In fact, by any fair standard, this is a tough test to fail: To pass, they should simply condemn the attack, denounce political violence, and extend best wishes to the victim and their loved ones. Even for the most callous of partisans, this couldn’t be much simpler.
Will any of this matter? Can critics writing opinion pieces bring back compassion and decency? These rebukes can be readily dismissed as the views of Never-Trumpers and Leftists.5
Besides, we can always drop back to “whataboutism”. Were the Democrats sufficiently condemning of the property destruction after the George Floyd protests? (yes). Did they call out the guy (who turned himself in to police) who said he wanted to attack Justice Kavanaugh? (yes).
The reality is that far too many voters enjoy the name-calling, sarcasm, and “search for liberal tears”. It’s become a cottage industry with plenty of customers. And the more those customers buy into the nasty rhetoric, the more incentive there is for politicians seeking their votes to play along. Although as I wrote above, I think that politicians can only play that game for a little while before they themselves start getting thrills from the nastiness.
A former communications director for the Republican National Committee put the concerns well:
Politics is a business of tough talk on tough issues. Some challenges, such as inflation, are at their worst state in generations. Some, such as the rapid speed of disinformation and hate, are newer.
If we can’t tame the latter, our other problems will become small in comparison.
The size of that problem is huge. Democratic concerns about “the future of democracy” pale in comparison to the choice by many to weaponize misinformation as an attempt to keep their voters in a constant state of agitation. It’s hard to know what can change that dynamic.
Greg Sargent had a column this afternoon about the challenges facing us. This passage stood out to me:
If you think the new information will slow down the dissembling among some on the right, I have a Trump University get-rich-quick real estate scam to sell you.
Fact-checking won’t save us. Clever memes calling out hypocrisy won’t change hearts and minds. Wonderful speeches, even by Obama, won’t get it done.
The problem is a spiritual one. Not the one that Christian Nationalists are battling; they are too often in the same mold as the scoffers and satirists. Not the one raised by people trying to weaponize libraries, or trans kids, or gay couples.
The question is whether or not we acknowledge the shared humanity with other people, even those with whom we disagree politically.
Maybe, just maybe, an attack on an 82 year old man in the middle of the night and the intended attack on the Speaker of the House might bring us to an awareness that things aren’t right.
If we could find that simple human recognition of the other, maybe we’d be in the burgeoning stages of something different on our political landscape.
Never trust “initial police reports”. They often require a lot of retraction as we learned from Uvalde and Minneapolis. That’s a story for another newsletter coming in the future.
The “Paul Pelosi Halloween Costume” posts were especially awful.
Nearly all these claims (except for the visa violation) were debunked in the official charges filed against the assailant Monday morning, but that didn’t dissuade those having fun with the story. (A follow up to the first footnote — don’t trust initial police reports and always read the filings — you can’t lie in those.)
NOT Bannon
I realize that I’m citing these sources. It’s likely a reflection of my daily news and opinion reading, which I’ll delve into in more depth on Friday.
So well said, John.
Thank you!