The link between language and gunshots

The Column: 06.15.25

Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were shot and killed in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, a mile from where I grew up, where my dad built a house in 1947 and he and Mother raised six children. Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were shot north of there in Champlin, across the river from Anoka where I was born. My nephew and his wife and kids live in the house Dad built and after the shootings they locked themselves in the house and tried to stay calm.

I sat in New York, watching state officials express shock, horror, resolve to catch the perpetrator, grief for the families, and I thought of the peaceful suburb I knew, houses on acre lots with big gardens, kids walking to school, the Mississippi a stone’s throw away, skating on it in the winter. And I felt that more needed to be said than shock and resolve.

We’re living in a strange time when violent rhetoric has come to be accepted in America, language that makes violence permissible: when you call your opponents scum, sleazebags, thugs, crooks, lowlifes, losers, nut jobs, sick, a total disaster, vicious, heartless, a pile of garbage, a joke, a fraud, pathetic, crazy, lying, disgusting, disgraceful, why is it so surprising that an armed man will go to his political opponents’ door and blow their heads off?

If someone walked up to you on the street and called you scum and a sleazebag and a lowlife, you would not be amused, you’d sense danger, you’d seek shelter.

Take yourself back to the Eighties and try to imagine President Reagan referring to Jimmy Carter as a sleazebag or a Communist. Mr. Reagan was an optimist who showed respect for his Democratic opposition — he had long been a Democrat himself — and he was a loving father to four children, including a liberal son Ron and a very independent daughter Patti. His race against Walter Mondale in 1984 was maybe the politest presidential race ever. You could take issue with the president on his Cold War policies, civil rights, AIDS, public education, etcetera etcetera, but the man himself, whatever his flaws, was an honorable public servant, a patriot, a man of warmth and humor, who carried himself with dignity and respect for his high office.

It simply can’t be denied that President Trump has brought a new level of animosity into the political arena. Back in Mr. Reagan’s day, Republicans might’ve referred to “my Democratic colleagues” or “my friends across the aisle,” but this fellow said, “If you vote for Biden, your kids will not be in school, there will be no graduations, no weddings, no Thanksgiving, no Christmas, and no Fourth of July!” Was he joking? Why aren’t we laughing?

Evidently a 57-year-old man considered two Marxist-Leninist state legislators to be vicious scum and a pile of garbage and so in the middle of the night, he put on a police badge, drove to their houses and shot them and fled and subjected the population of the Twin Cities and Minnesota to days and nights of wondering who might suddenly appear at their door, armed and dangerous.

In Minnesota, Mr. Trump’s approval stood at 43% before the shootings of the Democratic legislators and their spouses, less than Iowa’s 49% and Wisconsin’s 45, much lower than North Dakota’s 67, but I know enough Minnesotans, Iowans, North Dakotans, and Wisconsinites to say with confidence that 49% or even 43% are not in sympathy with the murder of political opponents or with the contemptuous language that opens the door to it. I told stories for years about a small town, Lake Wobegon, and its loyal churchgoing soft-spoken community-minded citizens, who valued modesty, respect for tradition, taking turns, good manners, charity to those in need, and though the stories were comic fiction, I believe they capture some fundamental truths about the Midwest. Half the population has allowed itself to be captivated by a spirit of vengeance and violence that is antithetical to their nature.

Fear is the favored force of evil, causing public officials to feel targeted, to see shadows in the hall, imagine the glint of gun barrels, back away from their principles. I’m tired of hearing it quoted but Edmund Burke was right when he said that all evil needs to be triumphant is for good people to do nothing and bite their tongues, not wanting to endanger their families. The shootings in Minnesota were an act of derangement and the president’s supporters need to face up to their complicity.

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