On October 28, Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi was assaulted in his home. David DePape, the assaulter, used a hammer in what seems to be a politically motivated attack. Luckily, Paul Pelosi’s life is not in danger and he’s recovering smoothly. The New York Times published an opinion piece about the Republican political response to this attack titled This Is What Happens When Republicans Tear Off Their Masks. This paper summarized the most insensitive comments made by Republican figures about the attack. It claimed that these comments reflect a Republican disregard for portraying an image of virtue (taking off their masks):
“It is no small thing to have a public and political culture in which people feel the need to perform virtue, even if they don’t actually practice it. The mask alters the expression of the face; the performance becomes real.
And when would-be leaders and the people who follow them no longer want to wear the mask? When they no longer want to perform virtue in any sense or in any form? Then the face underneath can turn out to be very ugly indeed.”
I agree with the author that it is problematic to see Republican politicians mocking or making light of such an awful attack (like Donald Trump Jr. posting a photo of underwear and a hammer as his ‘Halloween costume’). The Republican party seems to care less and less about keeping an image of polite traditionalism. However, I don’t think this is the biggest issue at play. Rather, it is the tendency of political figures to twist any event to their own benefit (especially tragic events).
It is to the benefit of Republicans for Paul Pelosi’s attack to not be taken seriously. They don’t want empathy for someone as hated as Nany Pelosi to develop, and they don’t want people to question what could have led someone (admittedly a mentally ill person) to do the assault. Democrats, however, benefit from vilifying the Republican party as much as possible. Because of this, countless articles can be found blaming the Republican party as a whole for this attack. For example, an opinion piece published by NBC stated,
“It would be a mistake not to see how DePape was radicalized (at least in part) by a right-wing media that does the bidding of the Republican party”
This type of projection seems completely unproductive. While DePape’s attack was politically motivated, the Republican party certainly doesn’t call for Americans to break into left-wing politicians’ homes and attack them with hammers. Likewise, the Democratic party doesn’t call for Americans to shoot five people at a Republican congressional baseball game.
The real problem with American politics at the moment is the division encouraged by both media and the politicians themselves. Whenever a tragedy happens, the media jumps all over each other to accuse a political side of culpability. This was especially prevalent during the pandemic. While The New York Times’ opinion piece made an interesting point about the importance of performative virtue, it still uses a tragedy to point fingers and assign blame.
Yes, totally agree. I was also recently looking into this event since violence against political leaders has increased tenfold in the past five years following Trump’s presidency. It’s the outrageous demonstrative of hateful speech that rewards this type of radical violence and because of Trump’s media presence, we clearly have the numbers to prove it (not to mention it is nearly all from GOP). Also, the way Republican leaders reacted to Pelosi's attack doesn’t help their case as no one was directly condemning the attacker. As leaders, simply offering their condolences offers no reprimanding to those violent individuals and is simply a human bare minimum; some didn’t even respond. It absolutely is just easier that way to not take accountability…