Gun Violence and Pipe Bombs Jolt Voters as Election Winds Down. ‘Again?’ One Asks. nyti.ms/2CNXlon
2/"In South Florida, not far from the mass shooting in Parkland in February, voters absorbed a week of gun violence and pipe bombs with a kind of grim resignation “Again?” asked Karenn Durand, 27, mid-shift at a restaurant in North Miami on Saturday, pondering the mass murder at
3/"a Pittsburgh synagogue. She said she held President Trump personally responsible — if not for the shooting itself, than at least for the nation’s deep divisions that the shooting reflected in horrific reality. In Milwaukee, Eric Pfeiler, an electrician who was walking downtown
4/"with his son Saturday, saw more of a systemic breakdown than any one person to blame. “There’s just so much turmoil everywhere, it’s just sad,” Mr. Pfeiler said. “Everyone’s lost their vision and has just started pointing fingers.”
5/"And at President Trump’s rally on Saturday afternoon at an airport hangar in Murphysboro, Ill., people expressed anxieties over the violence and discord they saw in American society. But they had come for a Trump rally performance, and that’s what they wanted to see. When he
6/"begged their forgiveness and asked them at one point, “If you don’t mind, I’m going to tone it down — just a little,” many people roared a resounding “No!” With nine days left in an already divisive election season, the campaign’s finale is unfolding amid a cascade of horrors
7/"and rounds of finger-pointing that reflect the deep fault lines in dozens of competitive House races and a handful of Senate races nationwide. If many voters appear set to back politicians from their own parties, according to interviews and polling, they also often defended or
8/"blamed politicians — particularly, President Trump — based on the same partisan lines. On Friday, Cesar Sayoc Jr., 56, was charged with sending explosive devices to at least a dozen of President Trump’s political foes. On Saturday, Robert D. Bowers was arrested and charged
9/"with 29 criminal counts in connection with an assault on a Pittsburgh synagogue that left at least 11 dead. Near Louisville, Ky., in an incident almost immediately forgotten, Gregory Bush, 51, was charged with murder after fatally shooting two black shoppers at a Kroger store
10/"on Wednesday after first trying to get inside a black church. Mr. Bush is white and the case was being investigated as a possible hate crime. In Florida on Saturday, hours after the synagogue shooting, Eric Gooden, a Democratic voter, hoped for an electoral solution to the
11/"turmoil. “The only way this will end is by the voting box,” he said. At Mr. Trump’s rally in Illinois, many people seemed altogether unaware of the synagogue shooting, until someone offered a prayer from the stage.
12/"Asked who was to blame for the country’s strife, Patricia Mitchell, who drove more than two hours from St. Louis to attend, cited “the globalists,” which she then defined as “somebody who won’t allow or doesn’t like for our country to just be themselves.” “They want to mold
13/"everybody into one big melting pot,” she said. “That’s not how we’re designed.” But the violence shows that the turmoil is starting very much at home. Many voters, in interviews with The Times in recent weeks, have been divided over national identity and who gets to define
14/"values in America, especially on issues of immigration and race. Mark Hetfield, who leads HIAS, a global Jewish nonprofit that resettles refugees and that appears to have angered the synagogue shooting suspect, said his organization was in a state of shock.
15/"“I’ve never seen anything like this in my lifetime,” he said in a phone interview. “People have to stop saying hateful things about refugees, about Jews, about Latinos, about transgender people, about the other,” he continued. “It has to stop in the context of everything that
16/"we are doing, not just in the context of this election.” But in the final weeks of the midterm election, which has become in part a nationwide referendum on Mr. Trump’s leadership, the climate has intensified, and escalating violence and fear are exacerbating divergent
17/"viewpoints among voters. At the halfway mark of his term, Mr. Trump faces a reckoning at home related to some of the words he spoke from the inauguration dais: “This American carnage stops right here and right now.” “Pipe bombs against public officials, African Americans
18/"killed in Kentucky, continued physical threats against the press, an all-out campaign of fear directed at immigrants” signal that hate is on the march in America, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said on Saturday. “We’re facing a battle for the soul of this nation,”
19/"added Mr. Biden, who is considering a run for president in 2020. “Words matter. And silence is complicity.” For some, a parallel that comes to mind for the current moment is the summer of the presidential election of 1968, which saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King
20/"and Robert Kennedy two months apart, said Randall Balmer, who chairs Dartmouth College’s religion department. “The difference, however, is that those shootings appeared to be directed against specific individuals, whereas this year’s violence is more tribal — against
21/"Democrats generally or Jews generally,” he said. Political leaders and candidates on the left and right saw a host of issues in Saturday’s tragedy, from gun violence to freedom to worship to the seemingly nonstop political maneuvering.
22/"Why is it so hard to accept that a clearly deranged man carried out deranged acts?” Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, tweeted. “The ‘false flag’ conspiracy theories on one side & the ‘it’s Trump’s fault’ on the other shows how unhinged politics has become.
23/"This isn’t incivility. It’s a society that has lost common sense.” In California, Katie Porter, a Democrat running for Congress in Orange County, denounced the commonplace nature of hate. “I’ve had enough of Washington politicians who are too afraid of crossing their donors
24/" in the gun lobby to take common-sense action to protect our families,” she said. As candidates in Pennsylvania canceled campaign events, and mourners gathered for vigils across Pittsburgh, Mr. Trump did not cancel his own rally in Illinois. He told the crowds the shooting
25/"was “an evil anti-Semitic attack,” and he urged the need to “vanquish the forces of hate.” But then he also criticized Hillary Clinton, a target in the pipe bomb mailings, prompting chants of “lock her up.” The crowd cheered when Mr. Trump said he would be sending troops to
26/"the border to stop the migrant caravan. In Florida, Edlyn LaFrance, 32, from Miami, said Mr. Trump was simply channeling the beliefs and grievances of his supporters, and that social media had only exacerbated an avalanche of national hate. “You just type one message on
27/"Facebook and hit ‘send,’” Ms. LaFrance said. “You find like-minded people.” The current climate of division is so pervasive that, in a report to be released this week, the Simon Wiesenthal Center found that a more than 40 percent of Americans believe the country is headed to
28/"a civil war, in a survey completed in September. “More than 80 percent of the voting public blames either the presidency, mainstream media or Congress, and it breaks down roughly along party lines,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the founder and dean of the center, who prayed at
29/"Mr. Trump’s inauguration. “Democrats and independents believe the executive branch is the problem. Republicans blame mainstream media and, to a lesser extent, congress.” In Wisconsin, as news of the synagogue shooting broke Saturday morning, Ellie Thomas, a nutritionist, said
30/"she had been limiting her intake of news because the volume of tragedy has become overwhelming. The coming elections made her “anxious,” she said, because she felt it was Democrats only chance to bring “balance to the system.” Tanner Mayr, 19, simply voiced resignation.
31/"“If the collapse of our society happens, it happens,” he said. “Everything falls apart anyway.” ~Elizabeth Dias, NYT, 10/28/18
