Everyday Americans – working stiffs or retired codgers – have every reason to despise the Republicans in Congress.
Pandering to the most powerful and richest members of society, they have schemed and plotted against us, taking away our resources and our rights, attacking our precious environment, wantonly exposing our kids to death on the battlefield, leaving the sick to die and the poor to starve…
We have a long list of grievances, much too long to detail in a blog. I’m sure you know what I mean.
I personally would not want any of them as a friend.
But IÂ would not shoot them. Or approve of violence against them. That would be sinking to their level.
I deplore James Hodgkinson’s cowardly attack on a group of Republican politicians yesterday. I don’t care what his motives may have been.
I am sorry for Representative Steve Scalise, who was critically wounded in the vicious attack. I genuinely feel his pain. He must have suffered – and be still suffering – terribly.
I wish him – and all the victims of the atrocity – a speedy and complete recovery.
It goes without saying that the attack was vile. But it was more than that.
It was an assault on our democracy, a violation of the very principles that distinguish us from the politicians we despise.
Ironically, Scalise was one of the fiercest critics of Obama’s attempts to get common-sense gun control laws through Congress. But I refuse to say he deserved what he got. I only hope he will see things differently now.
As one of those “liberals” that Republicans revile, I abhor thuggish acts like Wednesday’s attack. I believe with all my heart in reason and tolerance, understanding and inclusion.
We liberals are facing a moral crisis. As dark forces inflict their will on our society, we face a test of our own character. Will we fight fire with fire? Or hold fast to the virtues we learned at our mother’s knee?
As for me, I believe that good will triumph over evil – given time. I do not believe that any cause, however just, excuses mayhem and murder.
Scalise, the gun rights advocate
