STOP...HAMMER TIME
On October 28, the Democrat Speaker of the House (third in line for presidential succession) appeared in the news. Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul, was attacked and thumped in the head with a hammer. Supposedly , the perpetrator, David DePape, was inside the Pelosi residence shouting "Where is Nancy? Where is Nancy?" before being apprehended by the boys in blue, who arrived on the scene.
Now some of my readers may jokingly applaud this, "chickens coming home to roost" as one individual wrote me. Others may envision heading to their local Home Depot or Lowe's hardware department to purchase a similar bludgeoning device to mail from their post office, a construction tool AKA "gift box for Nancy." I want to remind them, that joking aside, this is a serious matter.
According to the National Review article by Ryan Mills:
David Wayne DePape, 42, appears to have sporadically published to a blog, godisloving.wordpress.com, where he wrote about God's love, and railed against censorship, communists, and the "elites/ruling class." The blog is titled "Welcome to Big Brothers Censorship Hell."
I will quickly fast forward past flippent comments left on social media. Some jokingly urging Republicans inundate radio stations asking their local DJ's for song request "for Nancy" the 1990 hit tune, " You Can't Touch This" AKA, "Stop... Hammer Time!" to be played in remembrance of this home invasion.
This attack on the husband of a leading Democrat Pelosi (whom I'm definitely not a fan off) emphasizes how far off the rails we've gone with regards to civility. Republican and Democrats representatives hypothetically, at each others throats, like rabid dogs, reminds me of my former teacher Mr. Klatt's 7th grade class, where we discussed heated times -19th century American history. Back then the major topic was not CRT (Critical Race Theory) nor illegal ballot voting. We were attempting to understand the heated environment prior to the civil war. The Senate attack I remember Mr. Klatt lecturing on is also featured in Senate.gov website:
May 22, 1856 the "world's greatest deliberative body" became a combat zone. And one of the most dramatic and deeply omnious moments in the Senate's entire history, a member of the House of Representatives entered the Senate chamber and savagely beat a senator into unconsciousness.
Representative (D) Preston Brooks of South Carolina entered the Senate chamber and repeatedly struck (R) Senator Charles Sumner over the head with a cane.
And history.com notes:
"Brooks became an instant hero in the South and supporters sent him many replacement canes. He was vilified in the North and became a symbol of the stereotypical inflexibility, uncompromising representative of the slave power. The incident exemplified the growing hostility between the two camps in the pre-war years."
In 2018, we had extreme left-leaning representative, Maxine Watters D-CA telling her supporters to heckle members of the Trump administration. Her words, "If you see anybody from that (Trump) Cabinet in a restaurant, and department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere."
The minority leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. warned against harassment of officials in remarks on the Senate floor.
Schumer stated, "If you disagree with the politician, organize your fellow citizens to action and vote them out of office, but no one should call for the harassment of political opponents, that's not right, that's not American."
While I disagree with many of Schumer's political views, I applaud that in this case, he spoke up and emphasized "no one should call for the harassment of public political opponents..."
We need to call out extremist views or false narratives, even if it's someone from our own party.
FoxNews shared that "Oxane Taub is speaking out about her purported ex David DePape...and had a long history of mental illness, at one point came home thinking he was Jesus." While I'm not a fan of their news reporting, I read in the LA Times:
In a personal blog that DePape maintained, posts include such topics as "Manipulation of History," "Holohoax" and "It's OK to be white." He mentioned 4chan, a favorite message board of the far right.
DePape's daughter, Inti Gonzalez, told The Times that her father wrote the blog. She said that she and her mother were reeling from the news that DePape had been arrested in connection with the attack...DePape also shared intimate emails and texts with family members, peppering them with xenophobic ideas and conspiracy theories. DePape also posted personal conversations with his daughter...Gonzalez said she was aware that her father posted some of their text conversations on the blog, but said she hadn't paid very close attention to the rest of the content.
"I knew that he was posting things like that, but I didn't know he posted all the stuff that I sent him," she said. "But I don't really care."
To me this highlights, several problems: his possible mental illness and her mental laziness or a lackadaisical attitude which translates into, "Don't confuse me with the facts. I've already made up my mind."
Of course just because you're curious by Qanon or are a follower of unproven "conspiracy theories" doesn't mean you're neccesarily a danger and should be banned from the hardware dept of the Home Depot. You should have the right to believe what you want. It's when we physically attack or urge violence against our neighbors that we have a bigger problem, a danger that starts to derail the kindnesses and civility we expect from our fellow Americans.
Yes, as Americans, we can disagree. We have honest views of disagreement with respect to topics like gun rights, protection of the unborn-what I refer to as "rights with responsibility"- and other heated topics. But we just can't go in wielding hammers at people we disagree with.
Where does this end?