Editor;
I’ll be quick. I’ve removed any potentially triggering words.
I’ll just say that if ever there was a time for this nation to take a good, hard look at itself and determine who we are and where we are going that time is now.
Written after an especially bloody day in an especially bloody month.
Hoping for better times,
Myles Chan/Walnut Creek
Since you asked the question, I do have to answer with what’s coming up in my mind lately, and that is that I am realising that the supposedly ‘peace loving, tolerant, liberal’ side of our society is proving that they are not so… that there is a lot of hate and violence coming from that sector. It does appear though that the news downplays it when it’s from them but highlights it if it were from a conservative side, or dare I say a Trump supporter.
What question are you answering?
Yes. Like much of the Internet these days I think people are inclined not to read but to react – usually inappropriately. I think the letter expresses what many of us are feeling right now.
Greg,
The right has been sending subtle messages of hate for years. You can say it’s not conservatives, but ever verified racist, flat earther, and misogynist I know turned out to be very openly Republican and openly MAGA. Family members who thought I was gay when I was younger and told me they’d disown me if I was? All conservative and now MAGA. People who assured me I was stupider than men and even argued with me why I don’t deserve equal right to men? All conservative and now MAGA. Two flat-earthers I know who have literally yelled at me in public when I presented them with facts? All conservative and now MAGA. A father I know who disowned his daughter in the 80s for having a child with “some black guy” and threatened his second daughter with the same in the 2010s for dating a man of color? Conservative and now MAGA.
It’s really tough to hear that, because I can guarantee no one you personally know who spreads that kind of hate is liberal. What do the liberal people around you that you personally know say that makes you feel is promoting violence? Because what I see on TV and the Internet about the how terrible the conservative base has gotten is right at home around me all the time, in my face, telling me how worthless I am for being a woman for my whole life, and how my gay friends who have done nothing wrong to anyone ever deserve to die.
Yea girl!!! You’re my new best friend!! 💯
The nation is just fine. The level of violence and tone of discourse will calm over time. The sway and policies of the right are a reaction to years of “too” progressive legislation and policies, this will moderate.
Just be nice to each other.
Firestone 11R
To suggest that this country is fine is to be as blind as one can be. The country is not fine. It has descended steadily over the last ten years and picked up speed almost exponentially in the last two. America is teetering on the edge of a cliff it won’t be able to crawl back up for a lifetime or more. If elections are effectively cancelled in 2026 and or 2028 will it still be fine? And have no doubt, that is the goal of the current administration.
Liberals are tolerant when you agree with them. So are conservatives. Thats why so many of us are centrists. If you let politics control you, you’re dealing with political anxiety, and it’s unhealthy. Do you really want to go through life ticked off 50% of the time if your party isn’t in office? It’s an addiction, and not a pleasant one…
The right wing troll and bot farms are working overtime to associate trans and left leaning persons to this crime. Turn off the usual propaganda pipelines, find trusted sources of news and information and pay attention.
Agree with the author but fear the country has been broken, with certain factions celebrating and poised to exploit the fractures.
“We got him.”
You took a phone call and put the handcuffs on, cupcake. Don’t make it sound like you did actual police work. Give me a break.
Posers for the Narcissist in Chief.
Flags at half staff for the fascist “like a son to me”?
C’mon! He profited from his message of hate and his followers, Trump’s followers, cruelly harassed any opposition. Is violence an appropriate answer, of course not, but this awful man is not to respected let alone sanctified for leading a mob.
The time for America to take this good long look at itself as people claim has happened multiple times.
Columbine High School
Sandy Hook
Electing a man in 2016 who belittled someone with a disability and bragged about groping women
January 6
There’s other key dates of course.
To claim that now is somehow the watershed moment is to ignore the very path over the last 25 years that allowed it to happen in the first place. As Neil Postman wrote, America is amusing itself to death.