#SOL16: Death Threats, The RNC and History

I'm thinking about love and honor, about the men I know well: my dad, my two brothers, my son, my father-in-law, my husband, Rob, and a score of friends. I'm thinking about these men in light of the rhetoric of violence aimed at Hillary Clinton by some men at the RNC convention. I'm reminding myself that none of the men I know well would ever speak about a woman as Trump, his advisors and the rest of the RNC speakers have been doing.

Women, we need to be concerned, not mute.

Just take a moment to look at the convention badges and signs that populate the Republican National Convention (RNC)--badges people wear proudly. 

This is what the RNC believes. From here.

These RNC bores takes their lead from Donald Trump who said,

“You know, it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass,” Mr. Trump said in a 1991 interview with Esquire magazine.

Does this seem like the language of a self-professed Christian? 


Or this offensive comment by Trump:

"Oftentimes when I was sleeping with one of the top women in the world, I would say to myself, thinking about me as a boy from Queens, "Can you believe what I am getting?"

The RNC's candidate understands women as possessions, as appendages.  So it isn't too surprising that the RNC isn't limited to misogynist-based slogans alone. 

KFC move over as some of these Republicans are doling out death.

Yes, death.


Al Baldasaro has called for the death of Hillary Clinton. Yes, her death. And he's proud to do so. Or Michael Folk, a Republican Congressmen who said Clinton should be executed. 

Such is the reckless speech and deed that is so very, very violent at this convention and among the GOP in general.  Like the stance on women, these followers also take their lead from Trump, whose penchant for spewing loose and violent discourse knows little bounds. Trump told us,

  "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters."  

5000 of these posters were distributed prior to JFKs assassination in Dallas. 

Now, add to all of this the post by Jim Wright that shows a wanted poster of JFK  distributed just days before he was murdered and the danger of such loose, amoral, and violent rhetoric cannot be mistaken for campaign fodder.  Such hate-speech invites others to also act without moral fitness, without concern for life. It begs others to to do terrible things, things that cannot be undone.

Now is the time for Republicans especially to tell their candidate that the hate speech and buttons and slogans and ridiculous chants are wrong and dangerous. It's past time for GOP voters to stop being mute and say out loud to their candidate that he won't earn their vote by embracing and threatening violence on Hillary Clinton. How can anyone who professes to love the unborn turn such a blind eye at death threats? 

Hypocrites.

#SOL16: Borderless Grief and the RNC

gesso, acrylic paint, Rob's writing, (M.A. Reilly, 2016)

I.

Grief knows no borders.

It spreads insidiously swamping your life and when fueled, flames out of control.  I know this firsthand and was reminded of the perversion of grief as I viewed the Republican National Convention (RNC). It's easy to take advantage of the grieving for anything that lessens such pain is seductive.  It's a siren call we all want to answer and being able to talk about the loved one and his or her death is a call few can resist.

We talk out loud to make sense of what confounds us still.

But setting up such fragile people to tell these stories as narratives of blame is a false balm for at best this only serves to further indenture the grieving to their pain and the past. There is no grace in blame, especially false blame.  There is no redemption in telling such stories.


II.

I thought about this perversion as I listened to Pat Smith's brief speech at the RNC where she blamed Hillary Clinton personally for her son's death. I thought about this as the two more moms, Mary Ann Mendoza and Sabine Durden, whose sons each died in car accidents and Jamiel Shaw, whose son was killed in a gang shooting spoke blaming their children's death on our President. And as I listened what I mostly thought was Shame on the RNC for exploiting these people's grief and for thinking they could also exploit our tenderness. 

None of us want to bear witness to a parent's raw grief. But even in our most tender moment, we know it is simply an error to blame either Secretary Clinton or President Obama for these deaths. It is just wrong by the RNC to set up these four parents to tell stories that lack the necessary logic to even appear true.


III.


After the camera was no longer trained on these parents, I wondered how they felt. After the high of talking to a national audience was gone, I wondered if there wasn't a profound sense of emptiness that settled about each of them. Filling yourself with hate will not lessen grief no matter how much such relief is sought.

I feel for these four as I imagine you do too.  For how could we not?  Resettling life after a loved one's death feels impossible. The life known exists no more. What is most desired cannot be given, cannot be had. Those in the depth of grief struggle to make sense of loss--loss that is largely irrational. The desire to blame some 'other' is common, if not expected.  And it is this natural inclination, perhaps even need, to seek a rational reason for the death that the RNC exploited.

Exploiting such vulnerability in order to create false linkages among death, Hillary Clinton, and President Obama is a truly shameful act by the RNC. We are better than this, friends.