A local editorial from the News-Virginian
EDITORIAL: And already, the blame game begins The violence we witnessed in Charlottesville on Saturday is as heart-wrenching as it is senseless.
As horrifying as the death and mayhem experienced by our neighbor to the east is, however, we must not allow knee-jerk rhetoric and accusations to rule our response to the violence.
That’s much easier said than done, of course. Less than an hour after a car plowed through a crowd of counter-protesters to the alt-right rally in Charlottesville on Saturday, social media was abuzz with finger-pointing.
Here’s a sampling of the commentary, found in less than two minutes, on Facebook and Twitter Saturday afternoon.
“Conservatives knew this would happen. They wanted it to happen.”
“This is all on Trump and his Rambo-on-steroids rhetoric.”
“Obama started it with all his race-baiting rhetoric.”
“Liberal radicals are more violent than the right ever was.”
All this before the name of the driver was even released. Before anyone knew his motivation or his politics. Before anyone had an idea even if it had anything to do with the protests and counter-protests taking place in Charlottesville at the time.
The fact is the fault for Saturday’s violence lies with the people who committed it, no matter which side they’re on. Neither President Trump nor Barack Obama drove that car into a crowd of people.
Liberals and conservatives both have been guilty of volatile rhetoric, that much is true. And unfortunately, rhetoric sometimes spurs dangerous or unstable people to act violently.
But for anyone — politician or anonymous social media poster alike — to start throwing around accusations with no proof (and often without any idea what they’re talking about) is stupid, counter-productive and an example of the continuing erosion of our social discourse.
We can say without hesitation that anyone espousing hate, bigotry and malice towards a group of people based on the color of their skin, the God they worship, the country they were born in, or the person they fall in love with, is wrong, and we reject it.
But we also reject the idea that anyone who opposes affirmative action, for instance, or gay marriage, or uncapped immigration is automatically a racist, a homophobe or a bigot.
It’s important, for the sake of our country and for the sake of civil society, that we listen to those we disagree with most vehemently — and that they listen back.
Those found to be responsible for the acts of violence on Saturday should be held accountable, and hate, in all its forms, should be denounced.
But so should hair-trigger accusations of hate and blame.
President Trump got it right, mostly, in his initial response to Saturday's violence.
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides," Trump said. "It has been going on for a long time in our country — not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama. It has been going on for a long, long time. It has no place in America."
We would have liked to hear Trump denounce the hateful speech, and clearly racist philosophy of the white nationalists whose rally was the flash point for Saturday's protests and counter-protests (which is NOT the same as saying that group is to blame for Saturday's violence. As of this writing, we don't yet know who is responsible.) Just as we would have expected the president to denounce the calls last year by black radicals to kill police officers. Hatred and calls for violence, whoever it involves, must be denounced.
But Trump is right in that both hatred and violence come from many sides — and have no place in our nation.
http://www.dailyprogress.com/newsvirginian/opinion/editorials/editorial-and-already-the-blame-game-begins/article_374e5fca-7fbf-11e7-be52-b75c446cd8a8.html