“I’m guilty of missing the opportunity to recognize something of the divine in the face of the Other” George Yancy wrote in a New York Times philosophy forum last Sunday. The “Other” was homeless man approaching him. Instead of seeing him “as a neighbor,” Yancy turned away.
I thought about Yancy’s essay the next day when I read Jay Ambrose’s opinion piece published in the Empire. It was about the one man shooting rampage that targeted Republicans in Congress and critically injured Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise. Ambrose saw it as fallout from “the most hate-filled, legally amiss, intellectually stupefying political rancor” of self-righteous Democrats and liberals whose “chief target is President Donald Trump.”
Much to my dismay there’s evidence which gives Ambrose’s arguments the appearance of credibility.
We should never condone violence against anyone. It was wrong when Trump supporters physically attacked protestors at his rallies. Those who thought it was justified, or acted with irresponsible indifference, were rightly condemned.
It was no less wrong when a masked activist punched Richard Spencer in the face the day Trump was inaugurated. It can’t be justified because he holds abhorrent white supremacist views. But Natasha Lennard likened videos of that assault to the “kinetic beauty” of Roger Federer’s “balletic precision and mastering of time” on the tennis court. The American Conservative aptly accused the Nation Magazine of implicitly endorsing violence for publishing Lennard’s article.
After Scalise was shot, James Devine tweeted, “I have little sympathy for the Republican Congressman who got shot today.” The longtime Democratic party strategist from New Jersey had no national name recognition before making his miserably cruel statement. He suggested Scalise deserved that fate “because he viciously opposed President Obama’s effort to reduce gun violence” while accepting “more gun lobby money than all but 15 other members of the House of Representatives.”
Such stories gave credence to Laura Loomer’s disruption of the Public Theatre’s production of Julius Caesar in New York. During the scene when the Trump look-alike emperor was stabbed, she walked onto the stage shouting “Stop the normalization of political violence against the right.” And like Ambrose on steroids, she followed with “You guys are ISIS, CNN is ISIS,” as if there’s one giant leftist conspiracy. Conservative talk show hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham applauded Loomer’s misplaced bravado.
None of this began with the election of Trump. The Tea Party’s anger toward President Barack Obama contained the violent overtones which made it easy for pundits on the left, including the New York Times, to blame Sarah Palin when Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot. They pointed to her “don’t retreat — reload” tweet and a map with crosshairs over Giffords’ district. Because that false narrative is still believed by many, the Washington Post fact checker debunked it again after Scalise was shot.
And in 2012, the Guthrie Theater cast an Obama-like figure for Caesar. However, there was no outrage on the left. Instead, thoughtful critics on all sides understood the rhetorical mastery in which the last word is Mark Antony’s condemnation of Caesar’s murder.
The misplaced acceptance of violence by Devine and Lennard is grounded by the same phenomena which animates the arguments made by Ambrose, Loomer and their counterparts on the left. Instead of acknowledging there are bad actors on every stage, they eagerly project their behavior onto the entire political party or mass movement.
We can, and must, do better than that.
“We are more than the worst thing we’ve ever done,” Bryan Stevenson wrote in his award-winning book “Just Mercy.” He developed that philosophy while providing free legal services to inmates on death row. Many were exonerated after years in prison. But to correct those injustices, he had to also counsel some of society’s most heinous offenders.
Stevenson’s insight offers an intelligent alternative to accepting anyone’s demonization of whole groups of well-intentioned people. It might teach us to “weep together, hold hands together, commit together to eradicate injustice,” as Yancy writes, believing we might then “unlock our sacred doors, take a real step beyond our sanctimoniousness, and see one another face to face.”
Such leaps of faith will be necessary if we’re to begin the work of ending violence and injustice around the world, in America, and in our neighborhoods.
• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector.
