A man, almost certainly mentally ill, smashed his way into Nancy and Paul Pelosi’s home in the early morning. He had zip ties and duct tape in his bag. He attacked Paul Pelosi, 82 years old with a hammer, fracturing his skull.
He had planned on tying up Nancy Pelosi and breaking her kneecaps. He wanted to see her wheeled into Congress so that everyone could witness how she had been punished.
Kari Lake, who may well be the next Governor of Arizona, an election denier and Trumper, joked about the attempted murder with an audience of supporters. Her supporters laughed.
Her supporters laughed.
I know they were not the only ones laughing or pleased by this assault.
Twitter and Fox News were rife with pleasure at and repulsive lies about the assault. Think about the hatred in this laughter.
My wife tells me often that I should never begin a sentence with “I hate” that references another human being. She is right.
Hatred is poisonous. It makes the person who is the recipient of that hatred into an object. It makes the purveyor of that sentiment into something bestial.
Each morning upon reading the American political news, I feel as if I am an alien, a person disoriented by what I see happening.
That’s why when I see a crowd laughing at cruelty or accepting of it or relishing it or promoting lies about it, I become disoriented as if common human decency is now becoming … what … an inessential virtue for all but instead one to be portioned out according to ideology, or by political affiliation, or by allegiance to a man or woman.
After January 6 and its aftermath, I’d like to say that I cannot be shocked by political reactions. How naive of me.
I think the coming years in America will be filled with mounting shocks and barbarities.
We are living an American life where Lake’s supporters can laugh at her making light of an attempted murder of the husband of the Speaker of the House, and it barely ruffles the waters of the day’s news. This laughter has the poison of tyranny and murder in it.
I think of King Lear often these days, a play about cruelty and abuses of power and the dissolution of a nation. Edgar, in Act IV, upon meeting his father, blinded in an act of terrible cruelty, says, “The worst is not so long as we can say, “This is the worst.”
We have not seen the worst, not even close.
