The Secret Service Investigates a State Senator for Posts

Missouri Democratic State Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal had to know she was in trouble the moment she clicked the arrow to post her incendiary comment to a public discussion on her personal Facebook timeline.  She couldn’t delete it quickly enough before someone captured and shared what she wrote: “I hope Trump is assassinated!”

Predictably, Chappelle-Nadal now finds herself isolated on the Isle of Humiliation and Shame, investigated by no less than the U.S. Secret Service. The senator’s political career hangs in the balance amid calls for her resignation from members of her own party, including U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill. Chappelle-Nadal has since admitted posting that comment was a mistake but says she will not resign.

So, we’ve come to this place: Our American President is siding with Nazis and Klansmen while our elected officials are wishing him dead – assassinated. How did we get here? How much further will we sink?

The low-hanging fruit would be to join the pile-on and declare Chappelle-Nadal stupid for throwing flames and exercising poor judgment. However, we might reap a more bountiful harvest by looking beyond her dreadful lack of restraint to the spirit that enlivened her words and momentarily emboldened her — or depending upon your view triggered her insanity.

To be sure, publicly professing that you wish physical harm – no less death by assassin – would come to the President of the United States is shameful, indefensible and, for an elected official, woefully irresponsible. Yeah, posting that is classically dumb and potentially criminal.

Still, ours is a grave error if we allow the narrative to end there. Failure to place this in context shortchanges the more considerable discussion about the current collapse of peaceable public dialogue, often egged on by the present occupant of the White House himself. The moment demands that we account for the overwhelming frustration Chapelle-Nadal expresses and so many of us feel regarding our existing presidential situation. However brutal, distasteful and – yes – hateful the senator’s remark was, it reveals a situational ugly edge where so many of us trod daily, a precipice to where 45 routinely nudges us.

Even I can’t pretend 45 doesn’t make me want to cuss daily and drink brown liquor. He makes me want to act and think out of character – like go off and pound my head against a desk, which would only bring me, not him, harm. Indeed, increasing numbers of Americans are feeling hopeless facing another three years of this presidency and no impending signs of impeachment. Perhaps, that’s what happened here, perhaps Chappelle-Nadal edged this time too close to the brink.

Chappelle-Nadal told The Kansas City Star she didn’t mean what she wrote. The senator explained that she was “frustrated” at how she said, “The president is causing damage. He’s causing hate.”

That doesn’t grant Chappelle-Nadal clear passage to wish someone goes all Grassy Knoll on the nation’s chief executive. That much still is reprehensible. But in this remarkably unhinged place where the president himself conducts his own extreme brand of political bidding, shouldn’t he bear any responsibility in ratcheting up the nastiness? Isn’t this the guy, who as a candidate, boasted he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue, murder people and get away with it?

Does Chappelle-Nadal’s outrage look any different given the president’s own outrageousness, his own blistering rhetoric and, this week, his unabashed racism? Should we be surprised how far civil discourse has fallen when the president himself is so patently uncivilized? And where does this dangerous game of rhetorical Putin-less Russian Roulette end?

No one can or should defend Senator Chappelle-Nadal, who is no stranger to controversy and has a reputation for making what many would consider over-the-top pronouncements. If she didn’t foresee her remark’s gravity – for heaven’s sake, a gunman already shot lawmakers this year, wounding cops and a Republican Congressman while aiming to massacre a whole lot of them – she most certainly must now. She likely will pay a political price, which absolutely will be greater than the consequences faced by other public figures who made similar overtures regarding our previous president.

On multiple occasions through President Obama’s terms, certain politicians and clergy – without provocation – openly wished for his death virtually without penalty.  If hate mongers would target a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, wouldn’t it stand to reason a bombastic president of far less moral repute might be much more vulnerable to such verbal assaults?

If Donald Trump’s bedtime tweets are our national nightmare, how do we keep from falling out of bed ’round midnight? How do we make sense of it all, maintain our collective cool and not be driven to say, or worse, do stupid things? What lesson can we learn from this teachable moment?

Meanwhile, one senator is about to learn a major lesson in how far is too far. In hoping aloud for the president’s assassination, she ultimately may have turned the gun on herself and brought about the death of her own political career.

© Copyright 2017, Jonathan Clarke, All Rights Reserved

Jonathan Clarke is a writer and content creator, blogger and communications consultant and a regional Emmy Award winning reporter and producer.

He is also a contributor to TheVillageCelebration. Jonathan consults for businesses and individuals, helping them find the best way to effectively express themselves. In his spare time, you’ll catch him singing, writing poetry, shooting photographs and cooking.

To read more of Jonathan’s writing, visit couldntkeepit.wordpress.com. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram @Jonclarkewrites.