The Enduring Sadness of Our Politics

Solidarity is in very short supply.

On Monday night the New York Post published an interview of sorts with Helen Comperatore, wife of Corey Comperatore, the hero firefighter who was shot and killed during the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump. Corey died as he was shielding members of his family from the shooter’s fire.

I was expecting the piece to be sad, and it certainly was. The Comperatore family is suffering through an unimaginable loss that no one should have to experience.

In regard to the political finger-pointing that’s since taken place, and is still running hot in our discourse, Helen made clear that she doesn’t blame President Biden for her husband’s murder.

“I don’t have any ill-will towards Joe Biden,” she told the Post. “I’m not one of those people that gets involved in politics. I support Trump, that’s who I’m voting for but I don’t have ill-will towards Biden … He didn’t do anything to my husband. A 20-year-old despicable kid did.”

Yet, she doesn’t want to talk to Biden. The president reached out to console her and her family after the shooting, but she turned down the call.

“My husband was a devout Republican and he would not have wanted me to talk to him,” she explained. She added that Donald Trump had yet to reach out to her family.

That revelation struck me as additionally sad. The Comperatore family should of course mourn their loss however they see fit, without judgment from others. They’re owed that. What the position nonetheless validates is just how incredibly contentious our political divisions are.

That a widow would feel as though she’s dishonoring her late husband’s memory by accepting words of comfort from a U.S. president of the opposition party is unfortunate to say the least, but it’s where we’re at as a nation. I’m guessing millions of other Americans, from both sides of the political aisle, would feel the same way under similar circumstances.

By the time you read this short piece, my guess is that a lot of the talk we’ve heard in recent days about the need to lower our nation’s political temperature will have subsided. Most individuals who found themselves stepping out of their hardened political corners for a rare moment of solidarity and personal reflection, in the wake of Saturday’s violence, will have returned. There’s no one incident in an environment this contentious that’s going to achieve lasting goodwill — not in the arena of politics.

Still, it’s worth remembering that the main purpose of politics is to avoid violent societal-conflict. Politics, by design, are a mechanism for making decisions through peaceful means and compromise. They’re not supposed to be our identity. They’re not supposed to be a form of entertainment. They’re certainly not supposed to be our religion. And contrary to a lot of good-faith commentary over the past few days, they’re really not even supposed to be about unity (civility and unity are two different things).

Who can fix our politics, or at least tilt them in a better direction, are people of good character — principled individuals, including in positions of leadership, who respect the Constitution and have a deep, invested interest in the betterment of American society.

Those are the people we should get behind, and the people that civic-minded Americans should aspire to be.