Is this our moment?

This is a very scary list: Read it slowly. Out loud is best.

• 1950: President Harry Truman not injured, but a law enforcement officer killed.
• 1954: Albert Patterson, A.G.-elect, Alabama killed.
• 1954: Five congressmen, from different states and parties, wounded in incident in Capitol.
• 1963: President John F. Kennedy killed. Lee Harvey Oswald killed two days later.
• 1967: George Lincoln Rockwell, Nazi gubernatorial candidate killed.
• 1968: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. killed.
• 1968: Robert F. Kennedy killed.
• 1970: Leon Jordan, State Rep Missouri killed.
• 1972: George Wallace shot and paralyzed.
• 1975: President Gerald Ford survived two attempted assassinations.
• 1978: San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk killed.
• 1980: Russell Lloyd, Sr., the mayor of Evansville, Indiana, killed.
• 1980: Allard K Lowenstein, Congressman, killed.
• 1981: President Ronald Reagan shot but survived. James Brady severely and permanently injured.
• 1986: Ed King, mayor of Mt. pleasant, Iowa, killed.
• 1998: Two police officers killed on Capitol Hill.
• 2003: New York City Councilman James Davis killed.
• 2008: Several municipal officials, including two law enforcement officers, killed at a local government meeting in Kirkwood, Missouri.
• 2011: A mass shooting at an Arizona event hosted by Rep. Gabby Giffords resulted in six people killed. Giffords survived with permanent injuries.
• 2013: Mike McLelland, D.A. Kaufman County, Texas, killed.
• 2017: Rep. Steve Scalise survived a shooting at a baseball practice.
• 2022: A gunman opened fire at the campaign headquarters of Louisville mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg. No one was killed.
• 2024: Former president Donald Trump wounded at campaign rally.

This partial list highlights the frequency of gun violence against elected officials in the US. The reasons for these attacks ranged from mob hits to political opposition to racism to anger at being given municipal violations and suffering a sewer backup. In some cases, the motives are just not known. There are actually more incidents that took place on foreign soil, and plenty of attacks without guns. And as you all noticed, this list which aligns with the childhoods of many of the followers Jewish Sacred Aging, starting in 1950.

For many of us, the assassinations of JFK, MLK, and RFK were pivotal moments. I was preparing for my Bar Mitzvah on the day JFK was shot, and as I was exiting JHS 80 on my way to my lesson, I saw our principal crying as we filed past her on the staircase; I never saw her smile much less cry in public. I was finishing high school, worrying about college when the other two were killed. Yet I always thought actual political violence was rare. Now that I research it, it wasn’t really that rare. I read yesterday (but truthfully, I can’t tell if I was reading facts or alternative facts) that 24% of our presidents have faced assassination attempts.

I think what is most troubling isn’t just the sudden prevalence of political violence (or maybe not so sudden), but that in recent times, it has become normalized. Normalized, and certainly no longer surprising. We used to be horrified by political violence. Now we are horrified that we ourselves are having some of these thoughts. Once uniformly condemned by leaders on both sides, the violent rhetoric from our leaders has become commonplace. So commonplace, that in the face of some people calling for the comments to be toned down, reactions were sharply divided, mostly along party lines. Both sides came up with divisive and inciting rhetoric in response to the shooting.

Joy Reid, on MSNBC, suggested that former President Trump faced the consequences of promoting violence. Rachel Maddow called for sobriety. She said political violence is “no freaking joke” and shouldn’t be played with. She, too, seemed to imply Trump reaped what he had sown. “Violence is very unpredictable. Once it’s part of your political system, you never know which direction it’s going to go. Nobody can harness it in one direction only, it doesn’t work that way,” she said.

On the other side, Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) falsely claimed that Joe Biden sent the orders. Collins quoted the president out of context. Mr. Biden said that he was done talking about the debate, and “it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.” The quote did not urge violence, it urged a group of donors to focus on Trump. Majorie Taylor Green responded to the assassination attempt by saying that the situation reeked of something sinister and declaring that democrats are evil.

A top political adviser to Democrat Reid Hoffman wrote in an email to journalists that the shooting was “encouraged and maybe even staged.” He later apologized for the comments. I am told that social media exploded with conspiracy claims. If you didn’t have at least some of those thoughts, I would be surprised. Sooner or later, I hate to say this, someone will blame “the Jews.”

Some right-wing posts have used the assassination attempt to justify the theory that the Secret Service is part of a conspiracy to get rid of the former president. The Russian English-language publication Sputnik International made a similar claim, that the Secret Service was “suspiciously slow.” I heard many theories about Trump not ducking, the Secret service not reacting, the shot being pellets not bullets, and the shooter aiming at the teleprompter, not the former president. Right or left, there were plenty of polarized crazy theories to go around, well before the facts were known.

One cybersecurity expert said that with so many unanswered questions, misinformation is likely to fill the information void. He said,”It’s incumbent upon everyone, including social media platforms, to act responsibly and step in…to ensure that this does not spin further out of control. We need to lower the temperature and think a little bit more about the moment we are in.” This was another call for moderation and care. But almost no one is listening. In fact, as I was writing this, I read that Donald Trump, who had originally called for unity, was back to posting that January 6^th was a hoax, that the democrats were weaponizing the justice department to go after him, and that he was charged with having sex with someone he never met. And he had been saved (I guess picked) by God!

This polarized, and polarizing rhetoric scares the crap out of me. With the rise in antisemitic statements and incidents, I actually had a thought that we should have a gun in the house, a thought I detest. I hate guns. I hate violence. But I am scared. I felt relatively safe 2 years ago, despite a president who refused to condemn Nazi marchers and praised the January 6^th attackers as heroes.

Last week I went to NYC to see Cabaret. And when Clifford (the American) asked Mr. Shultz (his Jewish neighbor) to leave Germany because it wasn’t safe, and Mr Shultz said he was safe because he was a real German, I wondered about our situation here. And as Donald Trump faced an attempted assassination, I worried that this could be our Reichstag moment.

We cannot let it be. We cannot sit back and wait for it to get better, for someone to save us. Because they may be busy. So, I say, we must fight back. But not with violence. Not by rushing out to get guns. With words and votes, and even with money. We must point out and condemn violent and incendiary comments, as soon as they are made. We must find common grounds. We must stand for facts. And we must form or join groups to urge everyone to vote for the candidates who will support the rule of law and our right to live safely and securely. We must give time and money to elect those who will support and fight for the rights of the poor, the widow and the orphan. And the stranger, because we were once strangers in a strange land.

I have said it before in these columns, we must be vigilant, and awake. We may not have the energy to be out in the streets for protests every week. But even if we are old and tired, with our accumulated wisdom we can convince people to take action. Vote. Get others to vote. Getting people to do things is our superpower. Use it. This is the moment.