(Sept. 20) Everybody in American politics should dial down the vitriolic rhetoric, very much including the rhetoric blaming the other side’s rhetoric for causing specific acts of violence.
Oh — and Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, in particular, needs an infusion of decency because his blows below the belt are both legion and inexcusable.
Finally, let’s be a little clearer about what is and isn’t a political cheap shot. A strongly negative appraisal of an opponent’s positions or the possible results thereof isn’t necessarily out of bounds. What should indeed be out of bounds is personal invective, wild charges of Nazism or communism or comparison to mass murderers Hitler and Stalin, or significant falsehoods that are willful or reckless.
Both sides commit major rhetorical transgressions that generically can fuel fires of violence. Yet neither side is collectively guilty for specific acts of violence or attempted violence by mentally disturbed loners. There is no collective “they” responsible for the two awful assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump, nor for the nearly successful one in 2017 against now-House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), nor for the separate assaults that nearly killed both Paul Pelosi, husband of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ), in 2022 and 2011, respectively.
Indeed, it is wildly and grossly irresponsible to blame one side for such violence without good evidence, and doubly so when one excuses or deliberately ignores rhetoric from one’s own side that is equally objectionable to the other side’s malicious language. Raising the vitriolic temperature in general can be much more culpable for a widespread cultural tendency toward violence than an individual rhetorical excess can be culpable for an act of directed violence by a loner.
OK, that’s a lot of ground to cover, with almost every individual assertion above probably meriting its own more searching essay. For current purposes, let’s zip through some examples that partially illustrate the general idea that a recalibration of rhetorical norms is necessary.
Start with Vance, as an exemplar of the larger problem….. [The full column is at this link.]
