In an age of vitriol, public service is an act of courage
A Feb. 3 piece at Politico just caught my eye. I missed this news:
Wednesday night, New Jersey councilwoman Eunice K. Dwumfour was found in her car with multiple gunshot wounds, according to authorities. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
Dwumfour, a Republican, was only 30 years old. She was still a newcomer, serving her first term on the Sayreville Borough Council after being elected in November 2021. Her former campaign manager Karen Bailey Bebert told the New York Times that Dwumfour was an “inspirational woman” who was excited to get into politics at a young age.
We know about recent shootings at the homes of politicians in Albuquerque, the attack on former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband that was meant for her, the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and the man with a loaded gun arrested outside the home of Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.). The threats and vitriol are that much worse for women in politics than men, especially if they are black (Dwumfour).
“Online violence is becoming more prominent because there just isn’t a consequence for it,” said Nina Jankowicz, author of How to Be a Woman Online and lead for the Centre for Information Resilience’s Hypatia Project, which combats online harms against women.
Harasssment has a “chilling effect,” Jankowicz says:
“You just really look at your life very differently. Especially if you have children. You wonder if there’s going to be somebody outside waiting for you,” Jankowicz told Women Rule. “You wonder, when you go walk the dog or bring your child to daycare, if somebody’s going to be there to threaten you.”
The Atlantic‘s Russell Berman ponders why so few people want to run for president. By the night of the State of the Union address in a president’s third year there are usually a cast of potential rivals. Not this year.
Chicken or egg?
Perhaps it is just a lull. On the Republican side, perhaps it is the dampening effect of Donald Trump’s insults have potential rivals tweet-shy (or whatever he’s using). For Democrats, perhaps it is the uncertainty over whether President Biden will run again. Perhaps it is because the job sucks. Perhaps people with families don’t want them put at risk.
One reason the current crop of GOP House members are so unappealing (even to the Koch network) is that political vitriol on and offline and intimidation by armed nutjobs have driven off all but the most narcissistic and — let’s face it — crazy would-be candidates. Public service work now seems like a masochistic invitation to abuse. That is, unless one aspires to a hosting gig on Fox or one of the fringier conservative networks where experience as a congressional bomb-thrower is a resume sweetener. It’s hard to know which came first, decent people avoiding public service or the lunatics who drove them away.
There was a time in this country (as the trope goes) not so long ago, when in time of crisis Americans stepped up to serve, even die, to defend their country and what’s right. Men and women went off to war to fight fascism. Rosies at home stepped up to rivet. Others planted victory gardens and recycled cans and rubber.
Nowadays, Rosies at home have targets on their backs.