Despite President Trump’s hypocritical “anti-hate” remarks this weekend, we should not forget that the mass shooter in the Pittsburgh synagogue not only was a known anti-Semite but also apparently justified his heinous attack using the exact word for the desperate families seeking asylum that had just been used by Trump, calling them “invaders.”
When the president uses the angry, hateful rhetoric he has used since before he took office and ever since, he encourages the haters, the marginal, and the insane to take violent action. It should also be clear that the shooter’s easy access to semiautomatic weapons, even with his long history of online diatribes against Jews and others, made a mass killing possible.
A lone security guard, as Trump suggested, would have been useless, and we cannot have our houses of worship become armed camps. However, we can do something to reject hate speech from Trump and his supporters. This country is rotting from the top. I sincerely hope that people of good will, whatever their party affiliation, reject hate in the upcoming election, and not vote for those who support and enable the president.
Susan Jhirad
Medford
