Okay, one swallow does not a summer make, nor one nutjob’s violence a holocaust. But it’s one more signpost on our downward road.
David DePape was a Trumpian conspiracy drivel blogger. In the wee hours he smashed a glass door at Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home — she was away — and attacked her husband, 82, with a hammer, breaking his skull. Shouting “Where is Nancy?” — eerily echoing the January 6 rioters. Whom DePape had defended online.
Numerous Republican officials came out saying such violence is unacceptable, but . . . . Always with a snarky “but.” Like Virginia Governor Youngkin’s “but we’re going to send her back to be with him in California.”
Ha ha. Cute.
Recalling Kevin McCarthy’s having said he looks forward to getting the Speaker’s gavel from Pelosi, but would have to restrain himself from hitting her with it.
Ha ha.
In the MAGAsphere, political violence is not only no longer unthinkable, it is very thinkable indeed. Romanticized even. Pro forma denunciations of it are disingenuous. The Pelosi attack is only the latest harbinger. Men have been convicted of plotting to kidnap Michigan’s governor. Death threats against non-MAGA officials proliferate. Election workers, and school board members, are targeted and intimidated. Armed men have been “guarding” ballot drop boxes and will be Election Day “poll watchers.” Lindsay Graham threatened riots in the streets if Trump is ever brought to justice for his crimes. People died in the attack on the Capitol.
The crazy left is not guiltless. But the vastly greater problem is MAGA madness. And yet, otherwise sane people will vote to empower them.
No pious statements opposing violence (especially with winks) will move us back from this cliff’s edge. It seems nobody in today’s America can be persuaded of anything. Republican Congressman Steve Scalise’s opposition to gun control didn’t budge even when he himself was badly injured in a mass shooting.
The only way to restore sanity is if all MAGA Republicans are rounded up and shot.
