Reacting to the Pelosi Assault

Violent assaults on anyone are unacceptable and abhorent. But politicizing them are repugnant

Here we go again; the rush to politicize another horrific violent assault.

We see it with every terrible mass shooting. And now, with the bizarre attack on the 82-year-old husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Paul Pelosi.

We wish him a full recovery and the full force of our justice system on his attacker. From several accounts of the assailant, he was deranged, if not mentally ill. But that hasn’t stopped partisans from trying to pin the attack on Republicans in these final days before the 2022 elections.

“Following the attack on Paul Pelosi, Democrats and the media quickly framed the alleged assailant as a right-wing conspiracy theorist incited to violence by rhetoric from former President Donald Trump and Republicans,” reported Justthenews.com.

And it was led by none other than the President of the United States, Joseph R. Biden.

President Biden on Friday likened the attack against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, saying the San Francisco attacker shouting “Where is Nancy?” echoed chants used by the rioters.

Speaking at a Democratic fundraiser in Philadelphia, Mr. Biden condemned the attack as an act of political violence and chastised Republicans for stoking widespread vitriol.

“It’s reported that the same chant used by this guy they have in custody was used on January 6th in the attacks on the U.S. Capitol,” he said. “This is reported. I can’t guarantee it. We can tell you what’s being reported.”

Please don’t complain to me about anything Donald Trump said ever again. Joe Biden is unfit for the presidency. Gone are the days of waiting for the facts before weighing in on such matters. And some of the facts coming out about the incident are . . . curious. We’d better stay tuned. We’ll stick with what we know for now.

Blogger and former California Independent gubernatorial candidate Michael Shellenberger detailed the assailant’s story. It’s worth your time. He concludes with this:

We must reject the opportunism of politicians and activist journalists to blame addiction-and-mental-health tragedies on their political opponents. When fanaticism is behind violence we should hold the ideologies to account. But it was, fundamentally, mental instability, not political ideology, that drove DePape. My aunt who suffered from schizophrenia, and was raised in the 1950s, had delusions about Elvis and JFK. Psychotic homeless people I interview speak frequently of their communications with aliens. There is a huge difference between the mere rantings of a psychotic and the ideological drivers of a fanatic.

Finally, it’s simply not the case, as Biden claimed, that just “one party” lies, and talks of stolen elections; they both do. DePape’s alleged attack on Pelosi was not, at bottom, “the direct result of toxic right-wing rhetoric,” as Weiner said, but rather the direct result of America’s continuing failure to properly treat mental illness, dangerous psychiatric disorders, and drug addiction.

I agree. How many times do we need to read about violent perpetrators to grasp the seriousness of our mental health crisis in America? Shellenberger, a former Progressive activist and energy expert (nuclear proponent), is a best-selling author on the Golden State’s homelessness crisis.

The people who expect me to write a dissertation on the evil attack on Paul Pelosi are also strangely silent about an assassination attempt on a sitting US Supreme Court justice and violent attacks on more than 100 pro-life pregnancy centers, organizations, and churches. The White House has been strangely mute on that violence, with one exception.

I quarter no lectures or lessons from them. This isn’t about “whataboutism.” It is about incivility, double standards, hypocrisy, and projection.

One constructive reaction concerns growing threats of violence against our public officials and the need to increase their security. The shooting of former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords (D-AZ). The attack at a Republican congressional baseball practice that nearly killed US Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA). The violent assault on US Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). The “Swatting” of US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). And now this.

Perhaps we could start by having the children of our public officials at least not celebrate attacks on Members of Congress, as Christine Pelosi did in 2020 in this now-deleted tweet.

Regardless of party affiliation, all of us need to consistently call out and condemn the violence of this nature and the celebrations and politicization of it by partisans, especially in our tribes. Until we do, this incivility will continue and incent more violence and evil.