In January of 1835, Andrew Jackson was walking down the steps of the Capitol after attending a funeral service when a man walked up to him, pointed two pistols, and pulled the triggers at near point blank range. In what was later called a one-in-125,000 chance, the powder in neither pistol ignited. The would-be assassin fled, chased by Jackson armed only with his cane, until the culprit was knocked over by a naval officer.
The point being that neither violence, nor the threat of violence, is alien to the history of America--nor to the steps outside our Capitol. There is a fatalistic hubris that affects every generation: "Now it's really getting bad".
Having said that, let me also say this: now it's really getting bad.
The hateful 'patriots' (does that make them 'hateriots"?) who spread across the Capitol lawn this week edged the threat of violence even closer to permissibility. The President of everyone in this nation was portrayed as a traitor; the health care plan he backs was likened to the Nazi death camps; one sign showed an automatic rifle pointed at a picture of Obama, with the caption, 'come and get it'.
It could not matter less whether this makes sense in the real world; it makes sense in their world.
In a predictable perversity, no doubt some of those hateriots were actually encouraged by the killings of more than a dozen U.S. military personnel at Fort Hood on the same day. After all, the shooter's name, Hasan, certainly cast further suspicion on a commander in chief whose middle name is Hussein. See? The signs are all there if you just look, aren't they?
In fact, the shooter himself was the victim of hate crimes simply because of his heritage. Which in no way allows or even explains the decisions he made to open fire on fellow Americans.
But it does suggest, even to the reptilian brains gathered this week on the lawn of our Capitol building...a crowd whose leaders do not know the Constitution from the Declaration of Independence...who can not remember the words of the Pledge of Allegiance...these people need to remember a declaration in the holy book they hold so dear: you reap what you sow.
