Michael Duncan

Fifteen years ago today I was driving to work and had come within a block of my office when an awful booming sound shook the ground, shards of glass rained down and a billowing trail of gray smoke spread across a bright blue sky over Oklahoma City.

Soon we would know 168 people, including 19 children, died a couple of blocks away at the Alfred P. Murrah federal building.

It doesn’t seem like it has been 15 years.

Every work day I drive that same path and come to the same spot on the street where I sat waiting for the light to turn green that morning.  I have avoided being there at 9:02 a.m.  But there is no avoiding the impact the Oklahoma City Bombing had on the city and the many who experienced the changes that began that day.

It is with that background, that image, that memory of the sound of death that I view and hear today’s shouts of anger coming from certain political groups, who seem to minimize the possible consequences of their talk (Kill Obamacare, Target Pelosi, Obama loves baby killing, Obama: The New Face of Hitler, Guns Tomorrow!).  It was this sort of talk that influenced a Desert Storm veteran to calculatingly plot and blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City because he believed the government was conspiring against the people.

That Ryder rent truck full of explosives is an example of the power and force of words.

I have spent my entire adult life crafting words to either inform or influence people.

I began as a journalist who believed the greater good is advanced by an informed populace.  I continued as a lawyer with the notion that the legal system plays an important role in fostering and stablizing the advancement of civil liberties, so that we don’t degenerate into shouting matches and fisticuffs — or worse — on the streets.

So I know the effect that words can have on people. And, I know the effect words of hatred and violence can have on people.  People like Timothy McVeigh.

And so, on this anniversary of the most significant event to occur in the history of our state, I am saddened and discouraged by the emergence of such inflammatory talk among people who are angry with the government.  Because, I know what can come of it.

I am all for robust debate, in fact I often thoroughly enjoy it.  I am all for people rallying in protest when they want.  I am all for effectuating change when change is needed.

But I am also mindful there is a narrow ledge we as a society can find ourselves stepping from if we let the rhetoric of politics devolve into words of hatred, racism and violence.  And one step is all it takes for another April 19th to occur.