"America's Darkest Forces Are Being Unleashed."

[Septua]

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/10/29/pelosi-attack-power-political-violence-00064105

“When you teach a man to hate and to fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies that he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your home or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies — to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and to be mastered.”

But after the Jan. 6 insurrection, and when we have reached a point where one in three Americans say violence is sometimes justified against the government, the cumulative impact of such rhetoric is hard to ignore. When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene proclaimed at a rally that Speaker Pelosi is “guilty of treason,” she made sure to tell her audience that the penalty for treason is death.

Some on the right, like Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, made the remarkable assertion that Paul Pelosi’s assault is tied to “leftist elected officials” creating an atmosphere that fuels crime.

Its very power is why violence is such a threat to a free political system. The question is whether this latest shocking act of violence will persuade the wielders of violent rhetoric to lay that powerful, dangerous weapon aside, and what the rest of us will do about it if they don’t.

[elleng]

1. ;-(

[summer_in_TX]

2. Chillingly prescient quote from Robert F. Kennedy

speaking the day after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

[wnylib]

3. Great loss to the nation.