By Andrew Boyd
When my now wife and I were early in our dating relationship, some 25 years ago, she took a position as a “scab” at the Detroit News in the midst of a writers’ strike. I recall listening to a local NPR affiliate interview with the union’s leading spokesperson, who justified physical violence as a response to verbal violence, and I thought “no.”
The next morning, I was dropping my wife off at the curb and as she sought to navigate the picket lines, same said person put a megaphone to her ear and yelled a series of pejoratives. A minute or so later, people were pulling the two of us apart. Wait, did I just expose my hypocrisy? Yes, although one might argue the proximity of the megaphone threatened real physical damage. I’m not perfect, and I failed to live to my own standards, not for the first or last time.
Silence isn’t violence. Words aren’t violence. Violence is violence, and those who commit it are due their punishment. Left, right, center.
British psychologist Havelock Ellis observed that all civilization has, from time to time, become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution. We’ve been taking a pickax to that crust for the better part of two decades, and there are more fingerprints on that tool than we can reasonably name in this column.
Politics is blood sport, and it has a way of bringing out the worst in people on the margins socially, emotionally and ideologically. We saw that in full measure this past summer, and again, to a much lesser degree, yesterday. In neither case would I lay the responsibility legally at the feet of anyone whose rhetoric may have played a role. We can’t equate speech with physical violence. It’s not right on principle, and on the basis of that argument, I cannot support the notion of impeachment or invocation of the 25th Amendment.
Here we are talking about the difference between legal and moral obligations, a critical important distinction. Are Trump’s fingerprints on that pickax? Yes. So, too, Hillary with her “deplorables” invective, and Maxine Waters, and media who run cover for BLM and Antifa activist rioters, and popular voices on both sides of the aisle.
I’m not happy with Trump. Indeed, I’m deeply, deeply disappointed. His narcissism would seem to know no bounds. He shirks all responsibility for the power and purpose of his words. Managerially and ideologically, I’ll still take him six days a week and twice on Sunday over the likes of Joe Biden, but it’s fair to wonder about the net gains or losses for the Republican Party over time.
Trump bears no small moral stain, but none that rises to the level of legal or constitutional action, IMHO. I feel bad for Pence, though. That guy has probably endured assaults to his character that would lay low a lesser man, like me. He didn’t deserve the opprobrium leveled at him by DJT in this refusal to take extra-constitutional action. Perhaps he’ll arise as the new voice of a more principled conservative movement that stands stalwart in the face of the morally bankrupt swamp.
In the meantime, please, everyone, talk and act with care, and imagine that the person with whom you disagree, even vehemently, may not in fact be your enemy.