If you want to talk about crime...
Mass shootings and attacks by Right-wing nutjobs have got to be part of it
A couple of days ago, a man broke into the home of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home, began calling out “Where’s Nancy?”, and attacked the Speaker’s husband, Paul, with a hammer to the head. Fortunately, Nancy Pelosi was not at home, but she was traumatized by the event.1
That is pre-meditated politically targeted violence.
The reaction by the political Right:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tweeted, “Horrified and disgusted by the reports that Paul Pelosi was assaulted in his and Speaker Pelosi’s home last night.”
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), the No. 2 Republican in the House, tweeted “Disgusted to hear about the horrific assault on Speaker Pelosi’s husband Paul. Grateful for law enforcement’s actions to respond. Let’s be clear: Violence has no place in this country. I’m praying for Paul Pelosi’s full recovery.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy did not even send a tweet but his office communicated this:
“Leader McCarthy reached out to the Speaker to check in on Paul and said he’s praying for a full recovery and is thankful they caught the assailant.”
Horrified and disgusted seems to have supplanted thoughts and prayers, although that message is clearly embedded in the Right’s approach to crimes that make the news feed.
But then there is this response from the Republican Governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin.
“Listen, I want to stop for a minute and — listen — Speaker Pelosi’s husband had a break-in last night in their house and he was assaulted. There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re going to send her back to be with him in California. That’s what we’re going to go do.”
Youngkin, who managed to get elected without anyone really knowing how far Right his views were until after he was elected in 2021, said this at a political rally for a GOP candidate in the Old Dominion State.
Donald Trump, Jr., who was not about to play second fiddle to Youngkin, talked about dressing up as Paul Pelosi for Halloween.2
Political violence is on the rise and an alarming percentage of Americans are okay with it.3 And that violence is overwhelmingly being committed by people on the far Right and the GOP embraces it.4
And as long as we are talking about crime, let’s address mass shootings. There have been 582 of them so far. Over 600 dead and nearly 2400 wounded. Three of them happened at schools and two at places of worship.5 The pandemic did not push those numbers way down in 20216 and 2020.7
We probably need to address police culture as well and the horrific number of times unarmed civilians have been shot and killed by uniformed police.8 And those numbers skew badly for people of color.
Police culture routinely accepts the subjective judgement of the officers involved instead of viewing such events through the lens of what is "objectively rational conduct". That culture lets police get away with shooting unarmed black men in the back while their hands are up.
Let’s throw in white collar crime, too9 — that costs Americans hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Most people, though, quickly rationalize that as a difference of opinion over the law more than a criminal act.
When the GOP campaigns about crime, they are only talking about what scares white suburbanites into voting them into office. The Republicans Party does not care about political violence, white collar crime, or police shooting people of color. And the policies the GOP pushes are designed to make those problem worse or at least more socially accepted.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
EXCEPT FOR DONALD JUNIOR (HE’S AN ACTUAL MONSTER)
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nancy-pelosi-statement-husband-attack_n_635dce47e4b01c1b94e70160
https://www.wowktv.com/hill-politics/donald-trump-jr-mocks-paul-pelosi-attack/
https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/03/31/rise-in-political-violence-in-united-states-and-damage-to-our-democracy-pub-87584
https://lithub.com/how-the-republican-party-embraced-political-violence-before-january-6th/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2022
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2021
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/
https://hbr.org/2016/11/understanding-white-collar-crime
In every crime in which there are other players besides the the criminal and the victim, there are only so many roles available:
(1). The Instigator
(2). The Facilitator
(3). The Abettor before the fact
(4). The Abettor after the fact
(5) The Master-Mind
(6). The Underwriter
(7). The Mouth-piece
(8). The Hired Gun
(9). The Crooked Judge
Mind you, these paradigms are drawn from crime-fiction, but they seem applicable here.
In following Mr. Trump’s various bits of chicanery I’ve derived many rewarding hours attaching these roles to various names in his coterie.