My Two Cents: Bombers and Shootings; Ain’t That America?

The van; the van was almost as big a story as the bomber—who, by the way, will not be mentioned here—who owned it and decorated it with hate.

It was shortly after noon last Friday when we actually the van, the tarp removed. The van’s windows were covered with right-wing bumper stickers that praised the president and denigrated his so-called enemies. It was as if the president himself had morphed into a vehicle, the hate so real, the attacks so vicious … Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Maxine Waters, George Soros, and more.

All people that the president has railed against, called names, demanded that they be imprisoned though they have neither been charged with, nor found guilty of, any crimes; the man the president once questioned about his birth, his faith, his leadership; the man the president once said he could physically beat up; a woman he has called stupid and ignorant and a liar; a man he claims pays protestors to speak up for the Democrats.

The stickers covering the van are the exact sort of stickers one can buy at a _____ rally; _____’s presidential seal; images of Hillary Clinton, her face in rifle crosshairs; the words “DISHONEST MEDIA CNN SUCKS”; a drawing of Trump holding a rifle and standing atop a Trump-branded tank. There were several “Make America Great Again” caps lining the dashboard. On a side window, the message:

“ZERO TOLERANCE KILL YOUR ENEMY AND THOSE WHO ROB YOU THEN TAKE THEM TO THE EVERGLADE [sic] FOR GATORS.”

The owner is clearly a _____ fanatic; he supports the president; he no doubt cheers “Lock her up” at every turn; he probably laughed when _____ said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and still be elected; he believes Obama is not one of ‘us’; he believes the media, well, except for the president’s favorite channel, is nothing but liars.

He believes that because he believes what the president says; he follows the president’s lead in dressing up his car; in spouting his Hate Speech, but then he took it all one step further and created bombs sent around the country to those so-called ‘enemies’ of the president and tried to assassinate them.

And then came the gunfire.

While we were still reading about the MAGABomber, there were shots fired at the Tree of Life synagogue, in Baldwin, a suburb of Pittsburgh and eleven Americans were killed.

Joyce Fienberg, 75

Richard Gottfried, 65

Rose Mallinger, 97

Jerry Rabinowitz, 66

Cecil and David Rosenthal, 59 and 54, brothers

Bernice and Sylvan Simon, 84 and 86, a married couple

Daniel Stein, 71

Melvin Wax, 88

Irving Younger, 69

Federal prosecutors have filed hate crime charges against the man—who, like the bomber, will never see his name on this site—they say stormed that synagogue with an assault weapon and several handguns.

The shooter made anti-Semitic statements during the shooting and targeted Jews on social media, and then he took his hate and rage and committed the deadliest on the Jewish community in US history.

To be fair, the shooter is a critic of _____ and had said in the past that the president surrounds himself with too many Jewish people. But what did the president say about it all?

More guns are the answer.

That day _____ told reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland:"If there was an armed guard inside the temple, they would have been able to stop him."

Yes, he wants men with guns inside places of worship; inside schools, shopping malls, convert venues, movie theaters … guns everywhere.

You’d think the NRA wrote that statement. But here’s what I think …you have a guard inside the synagogue, but when a man enters with an AR-15 and starts shooting, does the guard even have the time to pull his weapon? Or is the guard shot first in a hail of bullets.

And we may have to put guns in a building of worship because, since _____ has been elected, anti-Semitic incidents in this country have surged nearly 60%; there were 1,986 cases of harassment, vandalism or physical assault against Jews and Jewish institutions last year alone.

But, can we lay this on _____, even if the shooter claims to have disliked the president? I say, ‘Yes.’

When you have a man, who sits in the Oval Office and espouses hate, and then you have one of his rabid followers send bombs to the very people ______ rails against most of all, then it’s the president’s Hate Speech that spurred this on.

And when you have this kind of hate speech, when you have a president say some Nazi’s and white supremacists are nice people, what’s to stop them from opening fire in a synagogue.

Maybe _____ didn’t put the guns in the shooter’s hands, and maybe he didn’t teach the bomber how to build a bomb, but his words lit the fuse, and his words were the bullets.

And the only way to stop this is to stop the man at the top.

Vote. Dammit.

Vote for candidates who will stand up to the NRA; vote for candidates who will stand up to hate speech, even from the president—note that very few republicans, or Fix News, have even suggested that _____’s words are dangerous—and say that this is enough.

Think on this one last thought …

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Rose Mallinger survived the horrors of the Holocaust and lived to be 97, until a gunman, a Nazi white supremacist killed her right here in America.