Editorial: Fetterman, McCormick and moving past political violence

There are a lot of “ists” flying around right now.

It used to be the labels socialist, Marxist and communist being thrown around. Now it’s fascist, antifascist and anarchist as Democrats and Republicans hurl epithets at each other.

Pennsylvania’s senators say it’s time for that to stop.

On Tuesday, Republican U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick and Democratic U.S. Sen. John Fetterman sat down with Fox News to talk about the contentious political discourse in the country, especially in the wake of the slaying of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last week in Utah.

“I feel like it’s important that people can witness a Democrat and a Republican having a conversation after this,” said Fetterman, the senior senator and former Pennsylvania lieutenant governor and Braddock mayor.

It is important. Too often, we see someone from one party standing up in front of a crowd at a political event, saying all the right things to rile them up to rousing choruses of applause or boos, depending on the buzz words.

The other option is when one appears on a political pundit’s TV show — opinion masquerading as news — to deliver a well-rehearsed list of sound bites that include targeted attacks on the opposition. Those opponents, given the very split nature of these programs, are rarely present to defend themselves.

“The ability to disagree with your adversary but not hate them, not make them the enemy, is at the core of America,” McCormick said.

That would be nice, but it doesn’t seem to be true anymore.

It’s also important that we have a little intellectual honestly from the senators. Both have engaged in partisan behavior themselves. They have been at those rallies. They have been those talking heads with very quotable remarks.

But their appearance on one stage — and their apparently cooperative working relationship over the last nine months — shows one thing that everyone should take to heart: It is never too late to decide to work together.

It often feels as though the magma-deep divides between left and right in the country as well as the equally fractious splits within the parties themselves make it impossible to get back to a functional government. It is no longer confined to the halls of power, infiltrating our schools, our churches, our communities and even our homes.

“We’ve got to get above that as a country, and the first step is stopping this kind of hijacking the language and inciting political violence,” McCormick said.

The instinct on this may be a snort of derision and a response of “you first.”

But if that is everyone’s response, we may as well concede that the America and Pennsylvania and communities that we have had and loved for so long are gone.

Or we could choose to ignore the socialist, fascist and other “ist” labels and pick one of our own.

It might be time to become optimists.