Well, we’re seeing the natural progression of having a political party spend the past ten (30?) years demonizing their opposition. A raft of what is being assumed to be functional explosives have been mailed to a host of Democratic or perceived Democratic figures. And we have a president who still doesn’t take any ownership of the power of his comments. I’m not sure he’s even made a comment condemning this terrorism, instead just retweeting something his vice president posted. Instead, of course, he’s blaming the media. Throwing more fuel on the fire to tacitly encourage more extremism. Like sending explosives through the USPS.
What this brings me back to is the GOP primaries a couple of years ago. Ted Cruz is feeling some heat in Texas and he’s crawled back to Trump asking for help. For anyone who does’t remember, Trump publicly savaged Cruz’s wife, attacking her appearance. Trump also accused Cruz’s father of being implicated in the Kennedy assassination. And Cruz’s response was…as far as I can tell it was to drop out of the contest.
it makes me think about what we are supposed to do when confronted with bullies. With people who decide to act way outside the norms of our society in a way that invites chaos and violence, who abuse our unwillingness to physically confront them to allow themselves to behave as horribly as they desire. Regardless of how much the GOP wants to bang the drum about how unsafe our society is, it’s actually safer now than it has been in a long time. Compared to the 70s, 80s, and 90s we are living in a veritable wonderland of safety where the likelihood of being a victim of physical violence is actually pretty low.
But then we have people like Trump.
Which makes me ask this question: should Ted Cruz have walked over to Trump during a debate and just punched him in the mouth a couple of times? I’m not advocating physical violence as a first resort, not by any means. But even Jesus got physical at times. He didn’t have a polite conversation with the money lenders. Trump had attacked Cruz’s wife. He had attacked his father. I don’t remember him immediately apologizing for it, he probably threw a meaningless apology out after Cruz dropped out, but nothing at the time.
At some point you have to stand up to bullies. You can’t always walk away, you can’t always appeal to a higher power to remedy the situation. This doesn’t always justify physical violence, but I’m not sure it’s something that should also be automatically off the table.
And the hell of it is that I think it would have helped Cruz in going after the nomination. A Democrat wouldn’t have been able to get away with it, but a Republican from Texas who had seen his family brazenly disrespected? Yeah, I think punching Trump in the face might have been able to be spun in Cruz’s favor. Maybe it’s crazy, but within the environment of the Republican primary, with that group of people involved, a physical confrontation might just be okay in a way it wouldn’t be okay with the Democrats.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m just a product of a different time and place. I would have liked Cruz more for standing up for his wife and family like that, though. And I think people who behave like Trump, without remorse or tact, simply have it coming.