I was thinking about…

We Have to Be Better Than This

by Andy Lee

I’m sitting here struggling to find the right words after the deeply disturbing news that President Trump was shot at during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania today. As I’m writing this, the full details are still emerging, but the mere fact that someone got close enough to make an attempt on a political leader’s life is absolutely chilling.

Look, I get that we’re living in extraordinarily polarized times and partisan passions are running red hot. But this? This is a terrifying new low that should shake every single one of us to our cores, regardless of where we fall on the political spectrum. WE ARE BETTER THAN THIS.

I don’t care if you proudly rock the reddest MAGA gear or if you’ve been fervently campaigning for the opposing side since day one. Unless your heart is straight up devoid of any semblance of human decency, there is no justification, no rationalization that can possibly excuse taking up arms against political opposition physically. NONE. ZERO. WE ARE BETTER THAN THIS.

We can vehemently disagree with platforms, policies, personalities, whatever our individual sticking points happen to be. That’s what democracy thrives on – the peaceful transition of power shaped by the push-and-pull of diverging ideological viewpoints. But the second we as a nation accept or dismiss political violence as any kind of viable option for advancing agendas is the moment we shred the very fabric of what makes this bold American experiment worth preserving.

So I’m sorry, but there are no “but” qualifiers here. No “yeah, but the other side does it too” or “tell that to the radicals who’ve been doing this for years already” And definitely no whataboutism revisionist history lectures trying to sweep today’s depravity under the rug. We either fully condemn and reject this present reality in its totality or we have already lost the high ground to malicious extremists.

Because here’s the bone-chilling truth – if we cannot collectively and definitively condemn something as fundamentally unacceptable as weaponized violence against political leaders, then we’ve already forfeited our claims to being an exceptional nation worthy of moral authority on any matter of civic governance ever again. How can we possibly lecture dictators abroad about respecting democratic processes when we cannot uphold them within our own sovereign borders first?

So I don’t know about you, but I absolutely refuse resigning myself and my nation’s honor to becoming just another failed experiment on democracy’s scrapheap. I have to believe there remains a coalition of morally grounded citizens still willing to partner in rejecting these toxic trajectories at the source before it consumes us all completely.

WE ARE BETTER THAN THIS. For the sake of preserving the greatest aspects of America’s revolutionary identity, we simply HAVE to be. No individual political ideologies or partisan affiliations matter more than the oxygen of peaceful order and respect for rule of law. None of it means anything if we forfeit those founding principles to anarchy and rage.

So c’mon, America – wake up and smell the national emergency before it’s too late. We CAN still be better than the acts of politically-motivated violence and terror metastasizing within. We MUST be if we have any hopes of restoring the profoundly unifying ideals and civic glue transcending our petty ephemeral outrage cycles.

Stay resolved, keep uniting against the hatred! 🇺🇸⚖️