There is something more than usually saddening about that.
It is a truth curdling into cliche that American politics is riven by a partisan gap, left wing and right wing estranged from one another like the husband and wife in some long, bad marriage. But in its behavior here, the right does not so much seem estranged from a competing ideology as from its own humanity.
How is this a thing? How is an expression of caring, concern and outrage deemed worthy of mockery and condemnation? Are these people truly that corroded with cynicism and bile? Is their criticism now just a tic, a reflex bypassing thought? Is every damn thing to be reduced to politics?
Apparently, yes.
Once upon a time, we put politics to the side when tragedy came. Nowadays, that’s something we seem less and less able — or willing — to do. That’s a tragedy in itself.
Nearly 300 innocent girls were taken by madmen. Celebrities, political figures and everyday people wrote the social media equivalent of a petition to express their concern. That simple gesture begat a controversy — and gave us a sobering new measurement of that partisan gap.
Apparently, it’s so wide even compassion cannot get across.