The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-17)

A22 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, MAY 17 , 2022

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DRAWING BOARD ADAM ZYGLIS

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EDITORIALS

“I

AM the sole perpetrator of this attack.” That is what authorities said the accused gunman in the mass shooting at a Tops super- market in Buffalo wrote in a 180-page screed before he launched a murderous rampage targeting Black people. The young White man charged in Saturday’s massacre may well be the one who pulled the trigger, but the gunman’s actions cannot be separated from two increasing- ly horrifying facets of American life — the ascendance of white-supremacist conspiracy theories and the unrestrained, unique to this country, a ccess to firearms. Ten people were killed and three others were injured in the assault outside a busy grocery store in a Black neighborhood. Among the dead: Celestine Chaney, 65, shopping for shrimp and strawberry shortcake; Ruth Whitfield, 86, on her way home after just visiting her husband in a nursing home; Aaron Salter Jr., 55, on the job as store security guard. Mr. Salter, a retired Buffalo police officer, has rightly been hailed as a hero for trying to stop the gunman, firing multiple shots, but he stood no chance against someone wear-

ing body armor and armed with an assault weapon. In the hate-filled manifesto attributed to him, accused gunman Payton Gendron explained his choice of weapons that included a semiautomatic rifle and a shotgun: “There are very few weapons that are easier to use and more effective at killing than firearms, especially the Bushmaster XM- 15 I will be using.” That Mr. Gendron, 18, had undergone a mental evaluation less than a year ago for mak- ing a threat at his high school but could still obtain such weapons throws into stark relief the absurdity of this country’s gun laws as well as the weaknesses in its mental health systems. The tragedy in Buffalo wasn’t the only mass shooting over the weekend. Two people were killed and at least three wounded at a flea market in Harris County, Tex.; one person was killed and five injured at a c hurch in Orange County, Calif.; 21 people were wounded by gun- fire in Milwaukee after a professional basketball semifinal game. Research released last week by the Centers for Dis- ease Control and Prevention found that

the rate of the nation’s g un deaths in 2020 reached the highest levels ever recorded, with gun-related homicides increasing 35 percent. Yet Congress refuses to act — on uni- versal background checks, banning assault weapons, requiring safe firearm storage or other common-sense precau- tions favored by most Americans. And the same Republican Party that has steadfastly opposed any type of gun control has also helped fuel the ideology that spurred an 18 -year-old to travel 200 miles to hunt down Black people. His venom- ous manifesto echoed racist tropes nei- ther new nor unique to the United States. But what was once on the fringes has now been given currency, thanks to the Re- publican Party’s tolerance of white na- tionalists who count themselves as part of its base. “The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white suprema- cy, and anti-semitism. History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse,” Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) wrote on Twitter. Nor will this be the last time something like this happens.

Tragedy in Buffalo

The carnage was the result of a lethal combination of guns and hateful ideology.

I

N THE run-up to the 2020 presidential election, a former Texas police officer allegedly ran an air- c onditioning repairman’s truck off the road and held him at gunpoint in an abortive citizen’s arrest. According to court documents, this alleged vigilante told police that the driver was part of a plot to transport hundreds of thousands of counterfeit ballots that Hispanic un- documented immigrants had forged. (A devious strategy, supposedly, because their fingerprints would not be on rec- ord.) Instead of fake ballots, police found air-conditioning parts in the man’s van and, at his home, “a family conducting ordinary business.” The episode illustrates the alarming implications of President Donald Tr ump’s campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 election and deny his loss — and the widespread belief among Republicans that his lies are true. When one side claims its political oppo- nents are literally ending the republic, nearly any effort to fight back, no matter how dangerous or illegal, can seem justifiable. The ironic result could be the destruction of the very democracy it

claims to want to save. Houston prosecutors have charged both the former officer and his alleged funder, Texas Republican donor Steven F. Hotze, with assault with a deadly weapon and unlawful restraint. Earlier this month, prosecutors released a transcript of a phone call they say Mr. Hotze had with a U. S. attorney two days before the alleged ramming that paints a chill- ing portrait of a zealot dangerously committed to the fantasies and paranoia that Mr. Tr ump cultivated among his followers. “We’ve surveilled them for the last two nights,” Mr. Hotze said of the repairman. “They literally have boxes with thousands of votes in it, and they’re just taking these down and voting them.” According to the transcript, Mr. Hotze disclosed that a private investigator planned to “run into him,” “make a citizen’s a rrest” a nd force a confession, in part by threatening the repairman with deportation. Though Mr. Hotze later admitted the gambit turned up nothing nefarious, he continues to raise money to sniff out voting fraud. There are many ways U. S. democracy

could fail. A 2024 presidential candidate’s political party could use cockamamie legal arguments and antidemocratic pro- cedural maneuvers to overturn a legitimate election or throw the results into question. A more chaotic scenario is also possible, in which vigilantes whom politi- cians have whipped into a frenzy take drastic action on their own. Both could happen simultaneously. Not only would the Donald Tr umps of the world bear blame but also those who have enabled the s pread of his e lection lies — b y sowing doubts about the 2020 results, talking about how voters have lost trust in voting integrity, pressing for unnecessary new election laws, objecting to swing states’ 2020 electoral college votes or simply saying little as the rest of the Republican Party has embraced Mr. Tr ump’s fiction. The nation is not prepared for such an assault. Congress must close the legal avenues that partisan extremists might try to use to upend free and fair election results. And those Republicans who sit back expecting other officials to preserve the democratic order must wake up and speak up. Either one is defending democracy or aiding in its downfall.

The paradox of vigilantism

It threatens the democracy it claims to protect.

T

HERE SEEMS no end to the bloodshed in Ukraine, and yet the tide of war is clearly shifting against the aggressor, Russia. May was expected to be the month in which President Vladimir Putin’s troops, having failed to take Kyiv, regrouped in southern and eastern Ukraine for a stron- ger offensive that would push westward. May is more than half over now, however, and it is clear that this Russian Plan B is fizzling, too. In t he face of stiff Ukrainian resistance — bolstered by timely and massive shipments of Western arms — Russia has retreated from Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine, reported- ly, in some areas, all the way back to the international border Mr. Putin sought to erase. Russia has “likely abandoned the objective of completing a large-scale en- circlement of Ukrainian units” in eastern Ukraine, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War reported Sunday. It now appears to be aiming to take, at most, the entirety of a single Ukrainian region, Luhansk. And even that might be beyond the capability of Russia’s depleted, poorly led forces. Quite the contrary: The more likely next game changer in this war would be a widening Ukrainian counter- offensive that brought still more of the Russian-held south and east of Ukraine back under the control of its legitimate government. Certainly that is the result that would do the most to compound the strategic defeat of Mr. Putin, and that Ukraine’s supporters in the United States, Europe and elsewhere should therefore be pursuing in unison. Now is not the time, therefore, to go f or a negotiated cease-fire between Ukraine and Russia, as France, Germany and Italy have proposed in recent days. Their desire to shorten this destructive war — and thus limit the damage both to

Ukraine and to their own hard-pressed economies — is understandable. Their promises not to impose terms on Kyiv are undoubtedly well intentioned. Still, the risks of relaxing the pressure on Mr. Pu- tin before he is thoroughly beaten, and maybe not even then, are too high. That much became clear in the May 10 congressional testimony of Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, who told lawmakers that U. S. agencies “do not see a viable negotiating path forward, at least in the short term.“ The main reason for this is that Mr. Putin remains bent on conquest, regardless of near-term mili- tary losses. He “is preparing for a pro- longed conflict,” Ms. Haines said, “during which he still intends to achieve goals

beyond the Donbas,” as the eastern region currently at the center of the fight- ing is known. More likely than a Russian turn to good-faith bargaining, Ms. Haines warned, is a “turn to more drastic means — including imposing martial law, reorienting industrial production, or potentially escalatory mili- tary actions,” the latter phrase being an especially ominous one, given Russia’s nuclear and chemical capabilities. Mr. Putin “is probably counting on U. S. and [European Union] resolve to weaken as food shortages, inflation, and energy prices get worse,” Ms. Haines said. NATO leaders must give Mr. Putin no reason to believe that such a strategy will work.

Mr. Putin is losing

That might make him more dangerous.

ALEXANDER NEMENOV/REUTERS Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday.

David Ignatius’s insightful sketch of a drawn-out, more limited Russia-Ukraine conflict [“Now is when we plan for the war’s e nd,” op-ed, May 13] contained s ome elements of hope. Mr. Ignatius counseled “strategic patience” and offered examples of South Korea, the Baltics and West Germany as “wildly successful democra- cies in the shadow of unfinished wars” that “eventually... come right,” though South Korea is not quite there. But the parallel to the Bretton Woods, N.H., meeting as the Allies raced across France (my own father w as in that race) in July 1944 lacked something. Tr ue, it is not too soon to put together a n ew o rder such as the one that created the World Bank and the United Nations. Mr. Ignatius was smart to suggest postwar relief, not only for the immense damage to Ukraine but also for a badly depleted and dispirited Russia. Still, though, isn’t this exactly the time to give Russian President Vladimir Putin an out that could benefit all man- kind? That is, a summit to finish the job Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev started more than three decades ago: the destruction of the last dangerous stores of nuclear weapons? Now that’s a victory Mr. Putin could claim even as he bleeds out of Ukraine. Who wouldn’t w elcome at least something positive out of all this misery? Who could deny the specter of nuclear holocaust has been the elephant in the Ukrainian room t he whole time? A summit of all nuclear nations in which all agreed to a steep reduction, if not elimination, of their stockpiles could finally put to rest the terror we have lived with my whole life. Then we get to work on the real problem: global warming. Gregory Orfalea , Washington

The best outcome for all

Regarding the May 13 news article “Biden administration races to address formula shortage”: The baby formula shortage in the United States is horrific and inexcusable. The wealth of recent articles on this crisis has served as a reminder that our cultur- al discourse still treats formula as a source of nutrition that reasonable par- ents only turn to once they have unsuc- cessfully tried to move mountains to feed their child breast milk. Although this may be the case for many families who feed their babies formula, by spotlighting only these stories, we perpetuate the narrative that this is the only time when formula is justified — that simply decid- ing the costs of breastfeeding outweigh the potential benefits (emphasis on “potential” here, as the literature on this topic shows modest and inconsistent benefits of breast milk) is unacceptable. Despite good intentions, the “breast is best” campaign has inflicted enough physical and emotional damage on par- ents who, for whatever reason, feed their babies formula. Let’s stop perpetuating this harmful narrative and get formula to everyone who needs it. Rose Hendricks , Falls Church

The inexcusable shortage

and its disruption of international oil markets, their companies are intention- ally slowing production to drive up earnings. Ms. Rampell asked for a defini- tion of price-gouging. This is it: inten- tionally increasing the price of an essen- tial need, such as energy, during a time of crisis. A Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax, as proposed by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), is the best mechanism to penalize this profiteering — and provide Americans direct relief, while we do everything we can to quickly transition away from our reliance on fossil fuels. Congress should ignore Big Oil and their apologists’ attempts to shift the blame and get it done. Jamie Henn , Concord, N.H. The writer is director of Fossil Free Media and Stop the Oil Profiteering, which is advocating a windfall tax on oil and gas companies.

Regarding the May 12 news article “Consumers can adapt to some price increases. Others are inescapable.”: Though it is true that c onsumers can’t do anything to lower the p rice of gas, nor can they use a cheaper alternative, there is something that individuals can do about high gas prices: slow down. Cars typically a re most gas-efficient a t steady speeds of about 45 to 50 mph. At higher speeds, fuel efficiency generally declines by about 10 percent for every increase of 10 miles per hour. Cutting back from a speed of 70 mph to 60 mph, for example, has the same effect as a 10 percent reduction in the price of gas. At the current price of about $4.65 per gallon at my neighborhood stations, t hat works out to saving roughly $0.46 per gallon. Coupling that with better in- town driving practices, such as slowing down ahead of the upcoming red light rather than racing to it, and avoiding jackrabbit s tarts results in more savings. Judith Collins , Arlington

Catherine Rampell excoriated Demo- crats for saying that corporations are price-gouging in her May 13 op-ed, “The conspiracy theory infecting Democrats,” but she doesn’t have to take Democrats’ word for it; she can hear it directly from the mouths of corporate executives. Over the past month, we and our allies have listened in on Exxon, Chev- ron, Shell, BP, and other oil and gas companies’ first-quarter earnings calls. On each of them, executives have explained how despite the war in Ukraine

How to beat Big Oil

Regarding the May 13 Metro article “Youngkin, Hogan ask Justice Dept. to halt protests at justices’ homes”: Because some Supreme Court justices think they have the “right” to invade my body, I s hould have the right t o peaceful- ly demonstrate in front of their homes. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) should not deny my civil rights again. Ann Nichols , Fairfax

In h er May 13 Friday Opinion column, “Two pernicious myths about Alito’s draft opinion,” Ruth Marcus correctly observed that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s leaked draft opinion, if adopted by the Supreme Court, would only engen- der more litigation in state and federal courts over permissible limitations on abortion. In that inevitable flood of litigation, we hopefully will see chal- lenges to restrictive state laws rooted in the First Amendment’s religion clauses. Despite the hostility of strict textual- ists, including Justice Alito, to Roe v. Wade and its progeny, the Constitu- tion says absolutely nothing about any rights of the unborn. Rather, the status of the unborn is a quintessential moral issue that theologians have debated for ages and on which world religions disagree. Because the First Amendment expressly bars the government from establishing religion, the government can’t take a side in that debate. Yet statutes such as Mississippi’s, the one at issue in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization , do precisely that. The Mississippi statute purports to protect “ unborn human beings,” but that very term assumes a particular religious viewpoint. In a p ost- Roe w orld, the c ourt should be called on to decide a First Amendment challenge to restrictive state laws, which would be subject to strict scrutiny, not the more lenient rational-basis review that Justice Alito’s draft opinion envisions. Terri Scadron , Silver Spring

More d enial of civil rights

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The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-17)

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