The quotidian ordinariness of our morning commute was shattered yesterday by news of the shooting of Republican Congressman Steve Scalise, a Congressional lobbyist, a Congressional aide and two members of the Capitol Police Force, Crystal Griner and David Bailey. Before we knew the identity of the shooter, we all retreated to the ideological corners of our imagination. Some of us imagined a scary, Muslim terrorist. Others assumed that the shooter would be, like so many other perpetrators of mass gun violence, a white, radical right wing Christian man. When the shooter was revealed to be James Hodgkinson, an MSNBC watching, Sanders supporter from Illinois, it scrambled our smug expectations across the political spectrum.
Of course, the right wing media outrage machine wasted no time in dialing up to 11, putting progressives on the defensive by claiming that heated anti-Trump and anti-Republican rhetoric drove this man to attempted murder. In the Capitol itself, though, the better angels of our nature were on display. Both Paul Ryan and Nancy Pelosi appealed for unity, stating that an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. It was a noble sentiment and a relief to hear, but the question is whether we are capable of widening the lens and taking a cold eyed look at what has brought us to this moment.
If we are ready to draw the line at having our representatives gunned down in broad daylight on a baseball diamond, we have to confront the twisted mix of toxic masculinity, unfettered access to guns and the impulse to dehumanize the “other” that got us here. On the surface, yesterday’s shooter seems dissimilar to the perpetrators in other mass shootings. Hodgkinson was not trying to incite a race war, like Dylan Roof, or stop legal abortions, like Robert Lewis Dear. He held political views with which many progressives agree. However, like those other shooters, he thought it was appropriate to try to enforce his political will through violence. Our society is awash with men who think there is nothing wrong with using force to win an ideological argument, disdaining cooperation and consensus.
In addition, like the shooters in San Bernadino and Orlando, Hodgkinson had a history of domestic violence. The average mass shooter has a record of domestic abuse (Source: “Once Again, A Mass Shooter Has a History of Domestic Violence,” Christina Cauterucci, Slate). Unfettered access to guns makes that tendency deadly. Of all the rights enshrined in our Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment alone is treated as absolute. We allow it to trump other Americans’ Fourteenth Amendment right to life and accept senseless carnage as the price.
Last, and most intractable, is our escalating tendency to dehumanize the “other,” initially defined as racial and ethnic minorities, but increasingly encompassing Democrats, or in this case, Republicans. We must realize that this way lies madness. From Nazi Germany to Rwanda, we should have learned all too well the logical conclusion of demonizing difference.
Alexandria had better be a wake- up call. By all means, we should pray for Congressman Scalise and the other victims of yesterday’s shooting. We certainly should pray for the bloody, tattered soul of the United States of America. Just remember the Bible verse, James, 2:14-26, “Faith without works is dead.”
Lisa, one of your best posts to date! Write on!!