(June 15) Let’s stop the blame game. And, from a longer perspective, let’s apply the same standards to all sides. Don’t blame the other side when it does things you already excused when your side did them.
Such are the responsible reactions to the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. Right-wing media and social media for days now have been full of people blaming the Left for the shooting, with particular ire focused on President Joe Biden recently saying he was putting Trump in a “bull’s-eye.” Never mind that the shooter was a registered Republican gun enthusiast whom a high school classmate described as a consistent conservative. Never mind that “bull’s-eye” has a long-established metaphorical meaning that isn’t necessarily violent.
And never mind that conservatives (mostly correctly) howled when the Left tried to blame the 2011 shooting of Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona on a print ad from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin that put visual gun crosshairs on congressional districts held by Democrats.
Plenty of Republicans for nearly nine years have dismissed an abundance of violent rhetoric from Trump as metaphorical, not to be taken literally, but now they want to say it’s out of bounds for Democrats to say Trump is a “threat to democracy” even though the Capitol riot of 2021 was, well, at least something of a threat. When a loon brutally attacked the husband of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), top conservative media stars and elected officials offered barely a word of sympathy while they openly speculated whether Paul Pelosi was homosexual — and Trump himself repeatedly mocked both Pelosis while spreading conspiracy theories about the attack.
The examples of hateful rhetoric from Republican elected officials in recent years are almost endless. The same, though, is true of the Left, whose denizens repeatedly use extravagant language to denounce conservative Supreme Court justices while refusing to offer them legally mandated protection. They also refuse to denounce (and they even express sympathy for) violent left-wing street riots, with then-Sen. Kamala Harris, amid violent unrest related to Minnesotan George Floyd’s death-by-cop, calling for the protests to continue all year. Again, the examples could be legion…. [The full column is at this link.]
