Facing the Truth in Our New Political Climate
The president certainly isn’t to blame for Saturday’s shooting in Pittsburgh. But he’s responsible for encouraging lies and garbage news to take hold.
Truth and consequences.
Photographer: Pete Marovich/Getty Images
If you are at all like me, you’ve barely begun to process what we’ve just lived through in the last week in Jeffersontown, Kentucky; in Pittsburgh; and in the attempted assassinations of a number of prominent Democrats. Single episodes of hate or madness are, alas, something we’ll always have, but this feels different — because it really is different.
We can’t specifically connect individual actions to the overall political atmosphere, just as we can’t specifically conclude that a specific hurricane is the consequence of climate change. Perhaps the bigots in Kentucky and Pittsburgh would have acted anyway; perhaps in a different political climate, the attempted bomber would have found other targets.