America\u2019s left and right are both guilty of talking in bad faith and not listening to each other as they seek to score points. In fact, talking is making things much worse. Moderate appeals for unity and calm, including from former President Barack Obama and Utah\u2019s Republican Governor Spencer Cox, are struggling to be heard above the clamor. <\/p>\n
A Red Scare-style retribution is in the air now. As each battling side fails to see humanity in the other, a political doom loop of deepening political polarization, partisan anger and political violence seems to beckon \u2014 and Europe likely won\u2019t be immune.<\/p>\n
Of course, there has been unsparing vitriol coming directly from senior figures in the Trump administration. Vice President JD Vance has promised to go after the so-called \u201cNGO network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence<\/a>,\u201d citing the Open Society Foundations funded by philanthropist George Soros \u2014 a go-to populist bogeyman on both sides of the Atlantic \u2014 the Ford Foundation as targets.<\/p>\n Without substantiating his claims, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller \u2014 never one to defuse a grenade \u2014 has blamed Kirk\u2019s assassination on a \u201cvast domestic terror movement<\/a>\u201d and pledged to utilize the full clout of the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to dismantle leftist networks he says are inspiring political violence. This, even though the FBI has found no ties to any such network in Kirk\u2019s killing, which was seemingly carried out by a lone wolf. If Miller were serious, there are plenty of far-right networks worthy of close scrutiny for ties to violence, including to the insurrection on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, individual journalists like Elizabeth Spiers, who highlighted Kirk\u2019s often less-than-civil discourse in an article, have been picked on for their columns. And Trump himself hasn\u2019t held back, blaming the \u201cradical left\u201d for the assassination even before an arrest was made \u2014 much like some were quick to tar everyone on the right for the assassination of Minnesota Democratic lawmakers, Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark,<\/a> in June.<\/p>\n Arguably, some on the left have, indeed, displayed a breathtaking lack of human sympathy for a young man deprived of his life, two young children deprived of a father and a wife deprived of her life partner \u2014 an indifference that\u2019s stuck in the craw of Trump aides, many of whom were close friends with Kirk. And by doing so, they are foolishly aiding and abetting the hard right in its bid to paint liberals and the broader left as \u2014 in the words of tech billionaire Elon Musk \u2014 \u201cthe party of murder.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"America\u2019s left and right are both guilty of talking in bad faith and not listening to each other…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[31,32,295,2000,6562,299,5187,2816,95665,1105,2440,601,2003,6565,48,18111,33114,59423,1772,49,30878],"class_list":{"0":"post-432680","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-democracy","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-elon-musk","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-eu27","13":"tag-europe","14":"tag-european","15":"tag-european-politics","16":"tag-far-left","17":"tag-far-right","18":"tag-giorgia-meloni","19":"tag-jd-vance","20":"tag-law-enforcement","21":"tag-populism","22":"tag-rights","23":"tag-society-and-culture","24":"tag-steve-bannon","25":"tag-tommy-robinson","26":"tag-u-s-politics","27":"tag-united-states","28":"tag-unpacked"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115223109507604916","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}