It’s distressing enough that so many people are murdered in this country. Children in school, children at church, shoppers in a store, workers in an office building. Innocent people at music concerts or a movie theater, in a bowling alley or at a nightclub.
Add to that list an elected official and spouse at their home, the son of a federal judge, and again last week a speaker at a political rally.
The list is a road map unfolding across the nation, marked in blood.
Yet little seems to change, no matter how many are murdered — and it’s getting worse. Not just the hatred that drives people to kill, but so, too, the grandstanding from irresponsible political and so-called community leaders.
Far too many elected officials and self-appointed guardians of social and political ideology are eager to turn murder into a motivating sound bite for their own purposes.
Whether a bumper sticker or a social media post, they share the same adhesive that sticks in the mind of followers.
Last week’s murder of conservative activist and influencer Charlie Kirk at a rally in Utah sadly provided the latest opportunity to pin blame on political opponents.
“The radicals on the left are the problem, and they’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy,” Trump said two days later on Fox News, using the murder to blame his critics.
“The Left is the party of murder,” Elon Musk declared on X, as if no murders are ever committed by Republicans, Libertarians, socialists, capitalists, nonpartisans or people who think of a party label as alcohol or non-alcoholic beer, not politics.
“Populists dwell on anger,” retiring centrist Nebraska Republican U.S. Rep. Don Bacon said of Trump.
The president is a political populist, or so he says, while Musk is a personal populist out for his own ego and wallet. Both men use anger as a motivational tool for their supporters.
Missouri Republican U.S. Rep. Bob Onder said on the House floor the day after Kirk’s murder that leftists are “pure evil” and “literally will kill those with whom they disagree,” likening them to Soviet dictator and murderer Joseph Stalin of the 1930s and 1940s and Cambodia dictator and murderer Pol Pot of the 1970s.
Not even waiting a day like Onder to blame people on the other side of the political aisle, North Carolina Republican U.S. Rep. Pat Harrigan posted on social media: “The Left couldn’t stand 15 feet in front of Charlie and argue with his logic, so they shot him from 200 yards away.”
Certainly, the shootings and the threats are real, even if the blame-the-Left accusations are political theatrics.
Last year, nearly 9,500 threats and statements were leveled against members of Congress, their families and staff, up almost 150% from 2017, the U.S. Capitol Police reported.
It’s likely to get worse, many say.
“It’s a new civil war, and nothing good is going to come out of it,” Kristan Hawkins, who leads the anti-abortion group Students for Life of America and was a friend of Kirk, was quoted in national news reports.
“Nothing I say can unite us as a country. Nothing I can say right now can fix what is broken. Nothing I can say can bring back Charlie Kirk,” said Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican.
So if nothing a politician says can help “fix what is broken,” better that they just shut up instead of taking the opportunity to drive the political wedge even deeper into America to gain votes.
Larry Persily is a longtime Alaska journalist, with breaks for federal, state and municipal public policy work in Alaska and Washington, D.C. He lives in Anchorage and is publisher of the Wrangell Sentinel weekly newspaper.