Kendall Stanley: What are they thinking?

Disgusting. And a whole bunch of other words along a similar vein that describe the comments and conspiracy theories surrounding the assault on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, last Friday at the couple’s San Francisco home.

The ambulance had scarcely reached the hospital before the comments started.

Donald Trump Jr. came through by sharing an internet meme that the man who clubbed Pelosi with a hammer was somehow a gay lover.  Seriously?

Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake joked about Nancy Pelosi having security in Washington but apparently bad security back home.

There were the usual yahoos who tried to pin the assault on the rise in crime in American cities, especially those blue cities where people like the Pelosis live. Never mind the assailant had specifically targeted the Pelosis and was enamored with right-wing ideology and the QAnon nonsense.

Or as The New York Times succinctly put it, “Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s son, continues to post jokes about it.

“Dinesh D’Souza, the creator of a discredited film about the 2020 election called “2000 Mules,” accused the San Francisco Police Department on Monday of covering up the facts.

“Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, wrote that the “same mainstream media democrat activists” who questioned former President Donald J. Trump’s ties to Russia were now silencing the new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk.

“The reason: Mr. Musk deleted a post linking to a newspaper that once claimed Hillary Rodham Clinton was dead when she ran for president in 2016.

“In the days since Paul Pelosi, the 82-year-old husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was attacked by an intruder asking, 'Where is Nancy?' a litany of Republicans and conservatives have spread baseless conspiracy theories about the assault and its motives.”

It’s not too hard to figure there is not much sympathy heading the Pelosis’ way.

The GOP and far right groups have two bogeymen (women) — Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. The hatred runs so deep that if the rioters on Jan. 6 would have found Pelosi, no one could vouch for her safety. They wanted to hang Vice President Pence and they’d surely have added her to the gallows.

The question is where is the decency? Would the MAGA crowd and conspiracy nuts have responded the same if someone broke into Mitch McConnell’s house and assaulted his wife?

Politics aside, should there be any celebration of someone being assaulted merely because of who his wife is?

Of course there was plenty of whataboutism running rampant. Well what about the left-wing nut that shot Steve Scalise, of the loony that showed up at Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home armed and with mayhem on his mind.

Well what about it — I didn’t see any Democrats making light of either incident. And since when can’t we condemn an act simply on its merits, i.e., this was a horrible assault that could have ended much worse than it did.

Have we reached the point of no return on demonizing each other in the political realm? If not, then we are close enough so that some members of the commentariat question the future of our democracy and with good reason.

Have you heard the term Christian nationalists? Well these folks believe in putting God into the government in a big way saying we’re a Christian nation and we have to get back to those beginnings.

You don’t hear much talk about becoming a Muslim nation, a Catholic nation or, heaven forbid, a Jewish nation. Nope, the only acceptable nation would be one where evangelicals rule the country.

Can I get an Amen! to freedom from religion?

Because we weren’t founded as a Christian nation, but that’s a topic for another column.

Suffice it to say that there are any number of issues ready to cast us asunder — but only if we let them happen.

— Kendall P. Stanley is retired editor of the News-Review. He can be contacted at kendallstanley@charter.net. The opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and not necessarily of the Petoskey News-Review or its employees.

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Kendall Stanley: What are they thinking?