Jack of Harts

Political assassination has no place in a civil society.

There. I’ve said it. Again. I’ve been called a hypocrite and worse for that saying in the past, but I’ll say it again because I think it’s important. Deadly important.

Political assassination has no place in a civil society. Threats of assault or murder have no place in a civil society. Physical assaults and murder have no place in a civil society. They must be shunned.

In just the last few months and years I’ve seen marches calling for the killing of cops, and I’ve seen cops assassinated on the streets. I’ve seen people acting out shooting our president in the head, or stabbing him to death, or holding his head up for the cameras like an ISIS photo shoot. I’ve seen tens of millions of my fellow Americans dehumanized by the words of politicians and their acolytes because they believed something different or supported someone else. I’ve seen campaigns to drive them out of business, get them fired, and deny them any ability to work in the future.

These are not things I’ve seen on the political fringes, said by conspiracy theorists or crazy wackjobs. I’ve seen these on the mainstream networks, cable and broadcast. I’ve seen them on major computer networks. The Huffington Post, CNN, or Fox News. The major broadcast networks like NBC or ABC. I’ve seen major network hosts spouting sentiments that glorify death and destruction of political opponents in ways that are unparalleled in my lifetime. Or at least they seem that way.

Going back further in time, we see the mock hangings and tar and featherings of presidents, and of course the attempted assassination of Reagan. And more recently Giffords who has returned to the limelight. They survived their assassination attempts, but many others died or were permanently injured. But those were road bumps compared to what is going on now or in the past. Remember the assassinations of Kennedy, Kennedy, and King. Remember the violence on the colleges and the dead bodies at Kent State. Remember the bombs at government buildings and the calls for revolution and blood in the streets.

I grew up in an era when we’d thought we’d left those things behind us, along with the various discriminations we were raised to believe in our bones were not merely wrong but unthinkable. It was a brave new world where differing opinions made you unique, not evil. It was an era when TV was taken over by radio stars and when America was a shining city on a hill, an example of freedom and liberty to the world.

Today, we live in a world where the enemy is demonized once again. Named deplorable, illegitimate, bigoted, racist, and other charges. And today we live in a world where our politicians practicing for a game of charity baseball are the targets of an assassination attempt by a campaign volunteer who worked for the other party. I’m thankful for the two heroes who advanced into fire against a semi-automatic rifle with nothing but handguns. Their courage was beyond measure in that moment, and were it not for them this would have been the largest political assassination in our nation’s history.

The political rhetoric has been ratcheted up until guests and hosts on mainstream networks make it virtuous to want the other people dead. Not the fringes where this used to reside. Not the rebels wanting to topple the current way of life. But the mainstream networks. Members of the government. Mainstream sources.

This is wrong. We dodged the bullet forty years ago and stepped back from the violence that infected parts of our society. Can we do it now? Or will we lose the civil society we once held? Will we return to the violence and death we almost embraced forty years ago?

I don’t know. But if we do, it will only be because we make a simple statement as a society. We did it three decades ago, when I was a child. Can we live up to the promise of that shining city we once were?

For myself, I am simple and direct, because I don’t want to live in a society where all vestiges of civility are lost. That would be a very bad place to live in. So I have a very simple thought on the matter.

Political assassination has no place in a civil society. Threats of assault or murder have no place in a civil society. Physical assaults and murder have no place in a civil society. They must be shunned.

Period.

End of Line.