Thoughts amid these unsettling days

Below, WitnessLA has lightly excerpted three essays you might want to check out as we make our collective way through these painful and deeply disturbing days.

The first is a clip from an essay by New Yorker editor, David Remnick. Here’s how it begins:

A Nation Inflamed: After the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, who can heal a country so threatened by menace, violence, and division?

On April 5, 1968, the day after Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis, Robert F. Kennedy, who was pursuing the Democratic nomination for President, spoke to the Cleveland City Club about the “mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.”

In a mournful cadence, Kennedy told the crowd that a sniper is a coward, not a hero; that the “uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.” Violence, whether it is carried out by one man or a gang, he said, degrades an entire nation:

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons and ammunition they desire. . . . Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear; violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

On Saturday afternoon, a twenty-year-old man identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks positioned himself on a roof in Butler, Pennsylvania, and attempted to murder former President Donald Trump, who was speaking at a rally of his supporters. From more than a hundred yards away, Crooks allegedly fired off a series of rounds from what has been described as an “AR-15-style” rifle. One bullet grazed Trump’s right ear, he said. Had the shooter’s aim been even infinitesimally more accurate, Trump would have been mortally wounded. As it was, he was left stunned and bleeding from his ear. Before the Secret Service could sweep him off the stage, Trump paused near the steps to pump his fist and, in defiance, mouthed the words, “Fight, fight.”

President Joe Biden, who is facing calls from some Democratic leaders, various pundits, and much of the electorate to step aside, did the decent thing. In a statement, he expressed relief that Trump was safe and in good health: “I’m praying for him and his family and for all those who were at the rally.” Later, he appeared before reporters in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and insisted that “everybody must condemn” the “sick” attack on his opponent, adding that he hoped to reach “Donald” later by phone. Biden momentarily set aside his profound differences with Trump, and his firm belief that the election would decide fundamental questions about the future of the country and its essence. “We cannot allow for this to be happening,” he said. Biden’s sole misstep was to add, “The idea that there’s political violence or violence in America like this is just unheard of.” If only that were true.

It remains to be seen if there is any leader in these hideous times who is capable of the pained eloquence and reason that Kennedy showed on the day after King’s murder….

You can read the rest here. It’s worth it, whatever your political leanings.

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On Sunday, July 14, the Los Angeles Times editorial board published its own thoughts on what we’re collectively living through. Below you’ll find an excerpt from the essay, which you can read in its totality here.  

Editorial: Trump shooting a shocking and perilous moment for America

This should be a moment for unity — as both President Biden and Trump called for — to condemn violence and mourn the victims with one voice. Trump was grazed by a bullet and three other people at the rally were hit. One attendee died and two others were badly hurt and in stable condition Sunday.

Instead the incident threatens to divide this deeply polarized nation further and spur more violence. In a nation with more guns than people, that should concern every American.

Sadly, it is all too easy to believe something like this would happen. Mass shootings and acts of political violence have become horrifyingly frequent in the United States. No place is safe from bullets — not schools, churches, grocery stores nor Fourth of July parades — and no individual is. Members of Congress have been shot in a parking lot and at a ballfield. And not even one of the most protected people in the world, a former president with a Secret Service detail, is immune.

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Essay number three is an excerpt from the op-ed published Sunday by the editorial board at the Washington Post titled: Turn down the heat, let in the light.

Here’s how it opens:

Every participant in our civic life needs to conduct some soul-searching.

Donald Trump has responded commendably to his harrowingly close encounter with a would-be assassin’s bullet in Pennsylvania on Saturday. While he has every right to feel angry about an apparent breakdown in security, the former president expressed gratitude for the swift reaction of his Secret Service detail. Most importantly, including during an extraordinary conversation with President Biden, he called for national unity. In the immediate aftermath of this traumatic event, Mr. Trump’s words tended to de-escalate rather than inflame — even if some of his allies and advisers regrettably indulged in the opposite impulse.

This responsibility is not Mr. Trump’s alone. Every participant in our civic life needs to conduct some soul-searching. The motives of the gunman in Butler, Pa., remain unknown as we write. That they were so plausibly political, though, should prompt deeper reconsideration. Speech and conduct once considered unthinkably uncivil have grown routine: We live in a country where protesters harass lawmakers, justices, journalists and business leaders with bullhorns at their homes, shouting obscenities. Universities have become battlegrounds. And outright physical violence has become a bipartisan hazard — as Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) and the husband of former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) can attest. Ordinary citizens get caught in the mayhem — or, in the case of volunteer firefighter Corey Comperatore, 50, who lost his life protecting his family from bullets Saturday, extraordinary ones.

The essay goes on from there. We recommend you read it to the end. The last paragraph in particular is worth it.

Oh, and one more thing.

At around 1a.m. Monday, Heather Scott Richardson, dropped her most recent “Letters from an American,” on Substack.

It is an interesting read. And she pulls no punches. If you’re interested just follow this link.