I hope everyone realizes what happened this week. We saw attempted widespread political assassination on a scale not seen since John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theater, while his conspirators tried to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward all on the same night. That was done with the misguided belief that it would resurrect the Confederacy and bring down the Federal Government.
We don’t yet know what the motive was for the distribution of pipe bombs to billionaire activist George Soros, President Bill Clinton and Former First Lady Hillary Clinton, Former Attorney General Eric Holder, Former Democratic National Committee Chairperson Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Congresswoman Maxine Waters. We do know that each of them has been singled out for criticism and mockery by President Donald Trump and all of the talking heads at Fox News Channel.
While the President addressed the attempted attacks during his rally in Mosinee last night, he lacked the strong statement that would actually condemn the actions of what appears to be one of his supporters. And he certainly did not accept any blame for the current tone of modern politics. I did notice there was no mention of “Pocahontas” or “Crooked Hillary” or “Horseface” at last night’s rally–but there was still chants of “lock her up” before the event. The President’s strongest condemnation last night was for the media for being the one’s getting everyone riled up.
Will the pipe bomb scares bring us all to the realization that a serious cooling off period is needed in our national political dialogue? Will all-out efforts to demonize and destroy political opponents return to the much more productive presentation of platforms and discussion of real issues? Unfortunately it will not–as the timing of the attempted attacks could not have been any worse. Breathless coverage of the news and discussion of the ideas that I just mentioned were interrupted across the country by continuous attack ads for the mid-term elections that don’t build up any candidates but rather make their opponents out to be enemies of the state and people that need to be stopped by any means necessary–like sending them pipe bombs in the mail.
Once we are done tearing each other apart in the lead up to November 6th, on November 7th check out the new book by my candidate for President in 2020, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse entitled Them: Why We Hate Each Other—and How to Heal. It’s a thoughtful examination on how we got to the point that someone would send explosives in an effort to kill the critics of “his President”–and a whole bunch of people would wish that it had been successful–and how we can get back to being “Americans” again.
