DEAR EDITOR:

U.S. Rep. Michael Rulli’s “Faith and Defiance Day” resolution manages to be both pandering and insulting at once.

Pandering, because it’s simply one more example of a Republican officeholder bending over backwards to offer hyperbolic praise in order to both gain the fleeting attention of the president and also assuage his fragile ego.

While the assassination attempt in Butler *could have* been far more tragic, can Rep. Rulli stop for a second and recognize that a man getting grazed on the tip of his ear is not exactly “one or two (of the) events in your life that inspire you to be more than you are, that strike you to your core?”

If Rep. Rulli would like to read a resolution devoid of such hyperbole, I would point him to Rep. Steny Hoyer’s resolution after Rep. Gabby Giffords was shot *through the head at point-blank range* … https://hoyer.house.gov/content/hoyer-statement-resolution-honoring-congresswoman-giffords-and-victims-tragic-shooting

But more frustrating than the pandering is the insulting way in which Rep. Rulli invokes God. Are we really meant to believe that “God alone saved the President that day,” that “God alone prevented the unthinkable from happening” … Did this God save the president so that he could go on to cut funding to food pantries, cut health coverage to the poorest among us and take sadistic pleasure in sending migrants to concentration camps ringed with alligators? And is this the same God that also decided to drown 27 young people at a “Christian” day camp one week ago? I long for a politician who has the humility (and common sense) to admit that, if there is a God, we are wholly unaware of its intentions.

MARK MELNICK

New Middletown