This is, to me, the final straw. I have found the political cartoons done by Mike Shelton to be not particularly funny, not thought-provoking, nor offering anything other than a mean putdown of Democrats.
After the shooting of Republicans at baseball practice, to have Mike Shelton say that it was caused by the Resist movement goes beyond insulting. This follows a few GOP members that are trying to point the blame toward Obama, the political left, and the Resist movement. I find this newspaper’s politically charged cartoon not only repugnant but careless in perpetuating one of the main causes that led to this shooting: Political partisanship taken to the extreme.
As a member of the Resist movement I can state that the majority of us found the shooting horrifying, yet not surprising. Both parties bear some responsibility, but it can easily be seen that the violence against race, religion, and ethnic origin has increased with Trump’s rise to power and the lack of response by the GOP to the white supremacist, xenophobic and racist rhetoric that has come out of the Republican Party.
Instead of condemning this, the GOP has remained silent. Silence is a tacit permission that this type of behavior is OK. The Resist movement is about peacefully demonstrating, putting pressure on the House and Senate to stop the reversal of many good programs, the ACA, EPA, education, child health. We are not about violence.
If this is the stance that this newspaper takes, then I do not need to continue to subscribe as there are many other news outlets available today. Why choose Mike Shelton when you have so many much better award-winning political cartoonists available? We do not need meanness, partisanship, and divisionism in today’s political climate. We need thought-provoking, intelligently articulated, meaningful dialogue to defuse these types of situations.
John Pierce is a resident of Waikoloa