In a campaign which has been nothing except one disturbing comment, one disturbing incident after another, Donald Trump's not very veiled threat of assassination against Hillary Clinton and judges she might appoint has topped his previous recklessness. That is it was reckless unless inciting assassination and insurrection was not his intention, I would say the cumulative effect of his campaign makes it being unintended something which has to be proved as the more improbable alternative.
As disturbing as the fact that a major party candidate who has a real chance of becoming president, one who has the endorsement of the Republican Congressional leadership, the endorsement of many Republican governors and legislators on the state level, many senior figures in the Republican party, the fact that he has a very large number of supporters in the voting public is even more disturbing and dangerous.
I think one of the problem I'm seeing is that people are still using the conditional "if" to describe what is going on, falsely minimizing what is the obvious message that Donald Trump's candidacy holds. It isn't "if what we are worrying about" isn't possible, it is the fact that since it is entirely possible that people so encouraged will kill people, as seen in the assassinations of our recent history, of politicians, judges, law enforcement officials, encouraging them is a clear and present danger, not merely a worry.
Since his supporters using guns to kill people or terrorize them into giving them their own way is the danger - and in the United States that includes some of the most deadly guns put into the hands of even the mentally ill, as learned in Orlando and the Sandy Hook school in Connecticut and in myriad other places - they are dangerous to us all. Since their paranoia, their lack of moral restraint could be used to entice them to kill presidents and judges, they are a danger to us all. Since they could well be ready to gun down the highest officials in the country, they would certainly be ready to kill common citizens. We have no Secret Service or Federal Marshals to protect anyone some lunatic, against the regime of gun violence which has been made the law of the land at the behest of the National Rifle Association and other front groups for the gun industry. AND FOR THE PURPOSE OF GAINING POLITICAL POWER.
Merely removing Donald Trump as the Republican nominee won't dispel the danger which politicians and media figures have brought us to through gradual accretions of irresponsibility and lies., paranoia incited and nurtured through hate-talk radio, cabloid and broadcast media, nurtured to enhance the electoral chances of some of our worst politicians and assisted by partisan justices on the Supreme Court. I wouldn't be surprised if those in the Republican Party who might do that aren't worried that what they have made could turn against them if they tried it. They are the ones who have created this monster that threatens us. Donald Trump may be an outlier in major party presidential candidates, his rhetoric has gotten many Republicans elected to lower office and cannot honestly be called surprising in its irresponsibility and vehemence when we are talking about how Republicans talk in 2016. Susan Collins, the fraudulent "moderate" Republican Senator of Maine took until this week to say she won't vote for him. But she has endorsed the not much different Paul LePage for governor of Maine, twice, despite him saying stuff that is not much different.
The legal theorists who, in its fascist federalist wing and its fully invested libertarian wing, have invented and made the legal theories allowing both the regime of lies, paranoia and the massive irresponsibility behind this. The federalist fascists of legal theory have trained a generation of hacks to fill judgeships and Supreme Court seats to put this into place, the libertarians of the "free speech" "free press" industry have given them the slogans to use to free the media to embed those into the minds of the susceptible. Together, they have made all of this possible. No less than those paid liars of the gun industry, the legal hacks in the pay of the media have a crucial role in producing this. Turn on the radio, AM or FM, turn on cable and you will hear the poison flowing, freely. That is how we got here, we won't get out of here as long as that continues. The evidence of where it came from, what made Donald Trump into a presidential candidate with a real chance of being the president in January came from the media freed of its reponsibility to tell the truth. He is the product of a media which 24-7-365 encourages the ignorance, paranoia, the cynicism of the American People, appealing to the worst in us, discouraging the better angels of our nature in every way that can make them money and win their owners power.
Update: The accusation is that I merely copied Charlie Pierce. I generally don't read Pierce every day and I certainly went farther than he did. I will point out that a. The time stamp on my piece is 7:40 this morning. I don't have a TV or cable so I couldn't have watched the interview mentioned in the story. Had it taken place by then? b. I don't read the NYT regularly and I've used up the free articles I can read this month, so I couldn't have read Friedman. c. I think my piece was probably written before Pierce wrote his. I wouldn't accuse him of having copied what I wrote - I doubt he's aware of my existence but the reasoning in your accusation would mean he owes me a citation, though I doubt, very much he actually does. I don't really care, it's not as if I'm going to benefit from it. If and when I start begging for money for writing this blog, and it could come to that, I'll let you know.
I think any rational person would have come the same conclusions we have in common, I doubt, very much, that even an iconoclast such as Charles Pierce would slam the ACLU, Joel Gura or the American media in the way I did. He works for it, I don't.
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