Honestly, What is Wrong With These People?
Photo credit: Alex Baltzegar, Carolina Journal, via Twitter
Twelve state representatives reportedly walked out of the House chamber this week to avoid voting on a resolution titled, “Urging Congress to support the nation of Israel in response to the unprovoked attacks.”
There are photos of some of the legislators standing idly outside the chamber waiting for the vote to conclude. Four state senators declined to sign a letter worded similarly.
When innocent people – rather, politically convenient innocent people – are shot to death in America, this crew jumps to condemn gun violence and, on occasion, the police. Their side of the aisle spent years signaling their moral superiority – “defending democracy,” Black Lives Matter, “silence is violence.”
Days after Jewish civilians were raped and slaughtered, these legislators cowered in a hallway to avoid casting a vote.
Is gun violence okay so long as Hamas points at Jews and pulls the trigger? Is attacking a democracy okay so long as the assailants ride in on paragliders from the Gaza Strip? Does silence equal violence, except when terrorists slaughter Jews, then silence is okay?
President Joe Biden deserves praise and an awful lot of credit for his speech yesterday. “The brutality of Hamas — this bloodthirstiness — brings to mind the worst — the worst rampages of ISIS,” Biden said. “This is terrorism.”
Biden continued, “…if the United States experienced what Israel is experiencing, our response would be swift, decisive, and overwhelming.”
We wish we knew what rationale state legislators held when they walked out of a vote condemning the violence and supporting Israel. If reporters have asked them, we haven’t seen much coverage of it.
This raises yet another question of standards. After, say, Jan. 6 or claims of a fraudulent election, reporters across the state pressed Republican legislators for comment.
On this issue, no urgency has become apparent. There are one or two exceptions. WSOC’s Joe Bruno, for instance, asked Rep. Diamond Staton-Williams about the matter and she responded with a statement.
There’s a lot of bellyaching about “the media” – some of it’s justified and some of it isn’t. These episodes, though, just further entrench the feeling in some corners that reporters care about pressing for answers from people on only one side of the aisle. Maybe that’s unfair – only time will tell.
The legislators who “took a walk” are Reps. John Dautry, Amber Baker, Gloristine Brown, Kanika Brown, Maria Cervania, Terence Everitt, Pricey Harrison, Nasif Majeed, Marcia Morey, Renee Price, Diamond Staton-Williams, and Julie von Haefen. The senators who declined to sign the letter are Sens. Julie Mayfield, Graig Meyer, Mujtaba Mohammed, and Natalie Murdock.
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Lastly, a word about our post from yesterday regarding UNC. Our general point was that UNC shouldn’t issue statements about every matter, but since they’ve done so for the past several years, their omission of anything involving Israel seemed like a double standard. After sending the post, we learned that UNC does in fact have guidelines, created earlier this year, to largely stay out of matters not directly related to the university. (That policy is separate and apart from another measure requiring public institutions to avoid wading into the “political controversies of the day” – it doesn’t seem to us that offering support for students impacted by terrorism is a “political controversy.”)
