Editorial: We all have a stake in building unity in periods of mourning

Funeral services began Tuesday for 11 Jewish worshippers killed last Saturday in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. On Friday, a Florida man is scheduled to face a court hearing in Miami on charges he mailed explosive devices to numerous Democratic leaders and prominent critics of President Donald Trump. We are, we are told, a divided country.

No one seems to dispute the description, and it's hard to deny the evidence. The rhetoric of blame surges after each new atrocity with the certainty of Newton's Third Law. Critics blame the president. The president blames his critics. The forces on both sides file into columns as if pulled by magnets, and then repel each other with equal magnetic force.

And then more shootings follow.

More bombs. More threats. More accusations. More pointless name calling. The president is a racist. The Democrats are a mob. Where is all this taking us?

We are in mind of one of the president's first reactions to the murders in Pittsburgh. "This wicked act of mass murder is pure evil," he told a campaign gathering, then he went on to suggest that an armed guard at the synagogue might have prevented the tragedy. Critics heard the ridiculous second part - really? Must our churches, synagogues and public places protected by armed guards? Is that the face of a free country? - but ignored the first. And thus was the narrative shaped not into the kind of post-9/11 solidarity that found a divided nation united in grief and compassion but into the divisive quarrel over who cares most about the victims and whose personal interests are impeding the solution.

That the president and his behavior have some influence at such times cannot be ignored. After all, President Trump himself has said repeatedly, as he declared in an April 2016 campaign appearance, "We're going to have everybody in this country pull together. We have to. We're a country. … And remember what I said. 'All people.' … Men, women, young, old, African American, white, everybody. Hispanic. We love Hispanics … You're going to hear this from me more and more. We have to bring our country together. We're a divided nation, and we're not going to be a divided nation for long."

Today, we can think of no Trump campaign promise we would more strongly wish to come to pass, and none that seems more unlikely.

Is the president to blame for that failure? He must own it, to be sure, and we can't help believing that he could do a better job of discouraging the forces of "pure evil" who are perverting his "America First" message into justifications for violence. But there are similar rushes to judgment belittling the president that also must not be ignored. This discussion, as those 11 bodies in Pittsburgh declare in a thunderous, haunting silence, must get to a higher level.

Toward that end, we also cannot ignore the message that 91-year-old holocaust survivor Magda Brown of Skokie brought from the Illinois Holocaust Museum to Pittsburgh as she bravely went through with a scheduled speech just hours after the killings. Don't train your children to hate, she said. Believe that tomorrow will be better.

"I still believe there are more good people than bad," she said. "So I'm hoping that the good people are listening."

And, we would add, taking control of the conversation.