Caelin Bragg
Advertising & Distribution Manager
The recent pipe-bombs that have been sent to prominent victims of President Donald Trump’s rhetoric show that speech has more power than anyone lets on.
While we can’t directly blame the president for these pipe-bombs, he has lost any defense for being indirectly to blame for them. No one can, in good faith, tell me, when the president calls members of a group of neo-Nazi white supremacists, who injured multiple and murdered one counter protester, “very fine people,” or continuously calls the free press “the enemy of the people,” or continues to say that all Mexican immigrants are out to harm the interests of the American people, or campaigned on bigotry towards foreign Muslims, or refuses to take a stand against foreign powers killing a journalist, or refuses to believe our intelligence community’s findings of Russian interference in the 2016 election, or jokes about people shooting his political opponent if she won, or calls himself a nationalist (whether he knows its history or not), that these actions don’t have consequences.
We’re talking about the President. Of. The. United. States. A lot people say that presidents don’t actually have much power in government, which might be true (I still have doubts since virtually no Republicans are standing up to him, which I don’t want to believe is because they all actually agree with him and are instead just scared of defying him, which is still power over them), their words are the strongest in the country, and possibly in the entire world.
And this isn’t to say Trump started this, but he’s certainly started a new business of pouring gasoline on the forest fire. Leaders at all levels, from mayors, to governors to the president of the United States, have a responsibility. A responsibility to recognize that they represent more than just their narrow view of supporters. These leaders represent not only their side, they represent the opposing side and they also represent the worst of their people, like this man who sent these pipe-bombs. Being their representative, these people take what their leaders say seriously, which is why even jokingly saying that a political opponent should be assassinated if they won has dangerous ramifications.
Now, the person who sent the pipe-bombs to multiple Trump critics is not indicative of all supporters of the president, but I don’t see how that even entered the conversation. Actually, I know how. Because it reframes the conversation away from the fact that this man was a Trump supporter in the first place, and that he’s the logical conclusion to Trump’s rhetoric.
There’s been a growing sense that words seem to have no power or meaning (part of the craze around calling people “snowflakes,” but that’s for another time), but language is one of the greatest uniquely human things on the planet, and the pen is mightier than the sword, after all. We have freedom of expression, but that freedom only works if we take the responsibility that comes with it, and we’re now seeing what happens when we lose that responsibility.