The President employed two shifts of perspective to address the rancor of the post-shooting debate - and the question of whether our politics are poisoned by vitriol -- without getting mired in the rancor.
The first, and perhaps more obvious, was to ask us all to face the question looking forward, not backward.
But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.The second, more profound, was a version of "let he who is without blame cast the first stone" -- an exhortation to each of us to look inward -- as humans naturally do when they lose a loved one:
But what we can't do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.And then again, in the context of that reflection, the plea to focus forward:
After all, that's what most of us do when we lose someone in our family – especially if the loss is unexpected. We're shaken from our routines, and forced to look inward. We reflect on the past. Did we spend enough time with an aging parent, we wonder. Did we express our gratitude for all the sacrifices they made for us? Did we tell a spouse just how desperately we loved them, not just once in awhile but every single day?
