Don’t shoot the messenger, folks.
Please.
In fact, don’t shoot anyone.
In the surreal post-Trump-attempted assassination world, it seems to be too late for that.
In fact, simply wishing that people didn’t shoot one another, or threaten to shoot each other, daily, has been an American problem for generations.
Assassins at grocery stores, in Aurora parks, an Aurora cinema, two schools, the nation’s gay bars, straight bars, and just on the streets in quiet, wealthy neighborhoods, have created a crisis of domestic terrorism.
The list of presidential and political shootings in the United States is horrifyingly long. Few may know, but President Gerald Ford got shot at twice.
Just recently, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was kidnapped and beaten.
Probably more than half of the county clerks and secretaries of state in the country have horror stories about death threats.
For years, I’ve absorbed thinly veiled and often overt death threats lobbed at me in the mail, on the phone and online from all over the country.
Some of the worst came when I wrote signed columns supporting then-nascent Colorado gun control measures about a year after the Aurora theater shooting.
The threats, from across the country, became so prolific and so serious that my family and I were all trained in how to attempt to survive a car bombing.
The trick there is to leave the driver-side door open with your left foot on the ground before you insert the car key or start the car. If a bomb goes off, and you’re lucky, the bomb will blast you out of the open car door and not into meatloaf.
My daughter was forced to have her high-school resource officer walk her to her car and check it out for her every day for months.
Some of the scariest events came from a series of voicemails left by a Texas man, threatening repeatedly to come get me. Go to https://buff.ly/3Y3t2mX to hear the message.
Be warned, the voice mail is incredibly profane and filled with racial slurs.
Like so many journalists and public officials, we are, tragically, not strangers to violence and threats of violence.
I, too, however, am staggered and galled at some 20-year-old nutcase with an assault rifle wounding Donald Trump and maiming and killing his fans at a political rally.
We may never know what compelled Thomas Matthew Crooks to shoot at Trump, but in the twisted minds of bullies, the goal is often to silence their victims with fear and intimidation.
It’s anathema to who we are as a free society, gifted with the power of free speech like no other nation on the planet.
That’s why it’s so disheartening and exasperating to suffer a tsunami of disingenuous Trump fanatics berate me, and millions like me, for calling out Trump for what he provably is. He is a danger to the democratic structure of the nation and to millions of people he regularly degrades and threatens.
No cogent, honest or rational person can deny the tens of thousands of outlandish and dangerous lies Trump has told — repeatedly proven as malevolent falsehoods — since he ran for president the first time in 2016. His lying is endlessly documented and dispelled, even by his own political allies.
Set aside, briefly, Trump’s catalog of rap sheets and criminal allegations — some of which include sex assaults — Trump attempted repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, to overturn the 2020 Election he lost.
What part of the treachery and treason do so many of his followers not understand? He incited and supported an insurrection Jan. 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol, and he was convicted of it by congressional Republicans, who then became his sworn enemies.
Trump has since threatened revenge, targeting the people who held him accountable for those crimes and others.
This is not just a presidential candidate who is peddling lame trade policies or son-of-trickle-down economics. This is a man who admittedly and proudly admires and aligns himself with ruthless, murderous dictators like President Vladimir Putin.
There is no hyperbole in calling out the fact that Trump quotes and paraphrases Nazi and fascist texts and ideologies, he provably has repeatedly done it.
No one in their right mind disagrees that Trump, or anyone, does not deserve to be assassinated. He deserves to be convicted by voters in November and convicted in the courts for his many criminal charges.
But telling me, or anyone, that we can’t call out Trump for exactly what he does and exactly who he provably is, because it elicits assassinations, is every bit as much domestic terrorism and the nutcases looking somewhere for an assault weapon.
There is no demure nor polite way to hold Trump accountable for the atrocities he’s committed and threatens to invoke. He got caught trying to steal the election that he provably lost. It doesn’t get any worse than that.
Yet.
But when it does, you’ll be thankful that dedicated journalists will continue to call out him and other criminal politicians regardless of their political stripes.
Don’t shoot the messengers. Don’t shoot anyone.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com
It would be nice if we would be honest about both candidates and what they have done or will do to our country. Neither party can claim much in the way of a moral high ground. I am concerned that we can no longer tell our kids that a president exemplifies those qualities we want to emulate. Both lie constantly. We take sides and each side ignores the character of their candidate. It speaks poorly for us as a nation.
How can you compare a man who undermines democracy and sticks it to women by forcing continued pregnancy even when it jeopardized their lives and is not in their best interest? There really is no comparison. We are talking about losing American democracy. Trump wants to be a dictator just like Putin, not be held accountable, and terrorize American citizens who don’t agree him and women specifically, like he has already done to women. He has criminalized women and their healthcare providers. Now women who wanted carry a pregnancy to term but have a miscarriage are criminalized. Do you even care about women and their fundamental rights to make their own medical decisions? Trump is a con man. Biden pays his taxes, follows the rules of the constitution, cares about all Americans not just those who support him, he cares about climate change, women, LGBTQ+, the economy, upholding the constitution and American values.
LOL, he’s not “forcing continued pregnancy” on you or anyone else. Nor are we “losing American democracy,” which your side interprets as, “only my side can win or it’s not democracy.”
seriously? you can say that when it’s such an obvious inconsistancy? trump has already indicated dictatorship, doing away with the US Consititution, going after his political rivals. His minions demand a national ban on abortions for ANY reason and he would sign such a bill if it came to him. So, where you coming from FACTORY WORKING ORPHAN???
Judging that “both lie constantly” isn’t a good basis for comparison. We ought to also consider
* the actual number of lies?
* what are the subjects of the lies? and
* what are the consequences if people believe the lies?
In the June debate, “CNN’s Daniel Dale offered a report in which he said Trump had made at least 30 false claims, and Biden at least nine. ” “The New York Times chronicled 20 false statements by Trump, with another 21 it said were either misleading, lacked context or lacked evidence. Its fact check pointed out no false statements by Biden, with 11 meeting the other characterizations. The Associated Press corrected 11 statements by Trump, four by Biden.”
The varying subjects and the consequences of believing are more matters of judgment, and reasonable people are likely to disagree. I happen to think Trump lies on a wider range of subjects and consequences are more severe, but it would take longer to explain, so I’m not going to go there.
There is no equivalency here, and you should not try to create one in favor of your idol, the felonious fornicator.
You start off asking for civility, then go off in an unhinged diatribe, and you wonder why people are shooting at people?
Seriously? You’re comparing “shut the hell up” to a 5.56 round to the skull?
No one is saying don’t call him out. But please try to keep it factual. You are a newspaper, not MSNBC. Even they were smart enough to keep Joe and the Missus off the air that Morning. It might not hurt to also realize that a LOT of rural Colorado likely has a very different mindset than you on a lot of this.
Someone once told me something that’s stuck with me. “Always remember, “your” truth may not be “the” truth, and it’s guaranteed it’s never going to be “everyone’s” truth.
Congratulations on managing to work Russia in though, I wasn’t sure you’d manage to make that stretch.
JimmyZ-truth is truth no matter who is looking at it. huh? just like a fact is a fact. but it can all be spun or ignored or in trumps case, he just says what ever comes to his little brain and his minions believe it without ever checking themselves.
Is there any verifiable news as to the truth of these two things: Did Trump NOT call the widow of his slain supporter to offer his condolences? My understanding is that President Biden did call her but she declined to take the call because of her husband’s support of Trump. If they’re both true, it seems to me to be a good indication as to the moral character of each.
apparently Trump did call
Many of the people that worked in the Trump administration first term – His Vice President, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Chief of Staff, National Security Adviser, Press Secretary, Communications Director and Attorney General – have warned the country in speeches, interviews and memoirs that Trump is erratic, immoral and some one who must never be let near the White House again.
TRUTH!!!! And the democrats should be putting all that in ads across the country as well as what the other 16 candidates said about him in the 2016 debates…how soon they all forget. The man is an imbecile!
The NYT published a chronology of all the chaotic, dumb, irresponsible, childish, vindictive, and dangerous things he did or tried to do during those 4 dreadful years, now being rewritten by the ReTrumplicant party. It should be listed and annotated on the front page every day.