Hello Downriver,
I am neither naïve nor arrogant enough to believe I can make Americans in bulk change their attitudes about violence in our nation.
I write essays such as this periodically to provide what little perspective I might have on issues facing our state, nation and world — but I don’t have any illusions about the impact of these missives.
However, I have been brought up to believe there is someone who can do just that; someone armed with what’s been called the “bully pulpit” who can influence, persuade and actually prompt change in public behavior.
Sadly, though, the presidency no longer is the home of the bully pulpit; merely the bully.
Whereas Trump’s predecessors issued messages of calm after the murder of right-wing extremist Charlie Kirk who was gunned down at a college rally in Utah last week… well, Trump could do no such thing.
And since Trump can’t — or wouldn’t — do it, I see little reason to try.
As I write this we have no idea what drove his murderer to pull the trigger, but that didn’t stopped many — especially on the Right — from pointing fingers.
Even as many more pleaded for calm, for peace.
But that’s just not Trump’s style.
In a taped speech after the shooting, he said “for years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals.”
“This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”
He then called for “all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree”— good point, but then he couldn’t leave well enough alone, calling such episodes examples of “radical left political violence.”
“From the attack on my life … to the attacks on ICE agents, to the vicious murder of a health care executive in the streets of New York, to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others, radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives,” he said.
Not missed by anyone, Trump didn’t mention a single Democratic politician who had also been attacked — and some murdered.
Such as Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman, who along with her husband, was fatally shot in June. Also wounded by the murderer was state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife.
Or Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, who survived a shooting to the head in 2011 that left six other people dead, including a U.S. federal judge and a member of the congresswoman’s staff.
Or the April arson attack on Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence. (The suspect admitted to planning to beat Shapiro with a hammer.)
Or Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg, who was nearly killed in an assassination attempt in 2022.
Or the home invasion and hammer attack of Nancy Pelosi’s husband.
But this isn’t an attempt to fill in a scorecard; it’s an attempt to explain why calls for peace are falling more and more on deaf ears.
You see, it was 20 years after 9/11 — a moment of foreign attack on our democracy — that a domestic attack on our democracy took place.
It was on Jan. 6, 2021, that Trump encouraged — and, yes, incited — his followers to storm the Capitol Building to try and stop the certification of the 2020 election.
That he had lost.
Since then, nothing you can say, write or argue will ever convince the majority of Americans that this was not an attempted coup; a treasonous attempt to overturn our democratic republic and turn it into something dark, something foreign, something evil.
But the treason didn’t start and stop on that day, for it was on Jan. 20 of this year — in the first moments of his new term — that Trump granted blanket clemency to the nearly 1,600 of those convicted of or awaiting trial or sentencing for offenses related to the Jan. 6 attack.
In case you don’t remember, most of the 1,600 received full pardons, while the sentences of 14 members of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys were commuted.
Which begs the question I’m fighting with today: Why should I call for peace, for an end to political violence — when the President of the United States not only excuses it, but rewards those who perpetrated violence on our country?
I didn’t know Charlie Kirk; I only knew of his virulent uber right-wing messaging; arguments that were deliberately designed to inflame, incite and provoke.
And as many mourned his murder, I instead thought of innocent children killed in their classrooms, of young women assaulted by men of power, of Americans falling through the cracks of a system that’s broken.
Looking around for direction, for comfort, we should be seeing and hearing from a bully pulpit hard at work addressing these and other fears and challenges facing Americans every day.
Not hearing from a small person who blindly blames faceless boogeymen for the kind of violence he has personally rewarded.
No, I can’t influence anyone — and if Trump is the best we’ve got, then I’m not alone.
Quite a sight
As I drove around on Sept. 11, it was humbling to see American flags flying at half-staff in observance of the attack on our country 24 years ago.
But I couldn’t have been more offended when the flags stayed that way for days after.
Why?
Because Trump ordered it to honor Charlie Kirk.
And too many places left them at half-staff even if they weren’t government buildings.
The U.S. General Services Administration says that U.S. flags are flown at half-staff when we’re in mourning after national tragedies, for days of remembrance (like 9/11) or after the death of government or military personnel.
Charlie Kirk didn’t meet any of those criteria — his death didn’t warrant any kind of universal national observance.
Especially given his divisive, bigoted rhetoric, which included “unabashed” homophobia and Islamophobia.
He also appeared with Trump last fall and said that Democrats “stand for everything God hates.”
During the pandemic Kirk argued against mask mandates and called vaccine requirements “medical apartheid.”
He called white privilege a “myth,” labelled the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a “huge mistake” and criticized Martin Luther King Jr. as overrated.
But apparently, all of that called for our flag to remain lowered — yet another provocative move by a president bent on sowing seeds of division, not seeds of peace.
So not only couldn’t Trump offer calls for peace and unity, but he then felt the need to disgrace our flag by diminishing its stature.
Fortunately, the flag flying on my deck still stands for honor, country and the best of who we are and strive to be.
Not for Trump’s twisted view of some dystopian Amerika (Yes, with a “k”).
To read other of my essays, check out Substack and look for me at “Farrandipity.” It’s free. I can be reached at craig.substack@gmail.com.
