How is this going to fit in with that ‘BOTH sides need to dial it back’ narrative? 

Why did he kill the Republicans?

The problem isn’t the rhetoric… exactly. The gunman CHOSE to kill Republicans. He alone is responsible for that choice.

But this level of sustained hate is not something we have seen recently in America.

What is driving it? 

In any part of the world, there is a step that has to happen BETWEEN being civilized and being violent.

The ‘enemy’ (whoever it may be) must be de-humanized.

They aren’t merely a person who disagrees with you. Not someone who holds ideas that must be opposed. They are — personally — an enemy to be hated.

The obvious example is Hitler, blaming the Jews for Germany’s problems, and feeding hatred toward them.

Lenin stirred hatred of the ruling class. And led a bloody revolution.

France stirred hatred of the Church and the Aristocracy … and we saw the Reign Of Terror.

Islam stirred hatred of ‘infidels’ who can — among other things — be lawfully captured and sold as slaves.

Liberal intersectional politics fails without a villain.

It’s the white person. Or the man. Or the heterosexual. Or the Christian. Or the Constitutionalist. Or the Republican.

These things coalesce into a very specific hatred. The kind that turns a HUGE percentage of ordinary Americans into the Devil personified. 

That personalized hatred is why we see incidents like the Shooting at the Family Research Council. The shooter gave the reason he chose FRC:

In the 2012 shooting at FRC that injured a security guard, convicted domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins II said he targeted the group because the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) identified them as a “hate group” due to their traditional marriage views. —
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And surprise, surprise… the Alexandria shooter had the same influences.

1) “Michele (Bachmann), slit your wrist. Go ahead… or, do us all a better thing [sic]. Move that knife up about two feet. Start right at the collarbone.” — Montel Williams

2) “F*ck that dude. I’ll smack that f*cker’s comb-over right off his f*cking scalp. Like, for real, if I met Donald Trump, I’d punch him in his f*cking face. And that’s not a joke. Even if he did become president — watch out, Donald Trump, because I will punch you in your f*cking face if I ever meet you. Secret Service had better just f*cking be on it. Don’t let me anywhere within a block.”– Rapper Everlast on Donald Trump

3) “I have zero doubt that if Dick Cheney was not in power, people wouldn’t be dying needlessly tomorrow….I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.” — Bill Maher

4) “I know how the ‘tea party’ people feel, the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health-care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their “Obama Plan White Slavery” signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads.” — The Washington Post’s Courtland Milloy

5) “F*** God D*mned Joe the God D*mned Motherf*cking plumber! I want Motherf*cking Joe the plumber dead.” — Liberal talk show host Charles Karel Bouley on the air.

6) “Are you angry? [Yeah!] Are you angry? [Yeah!] Are you angry? [Yeah!] Well, we’ve been watching intifada in Palestine, we’ve been watching an uprising in Iraq, and the question is that what are we doing? How come we don’t have an intifada in this country? Because it seem[s] to me, that we are comfortable in where we are, watching CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox, and all these mainstream… giving us a window to the world while the world is being managed from Washington, from New York, from every other place in here in San Francisco: Chevron, Bechtel, [Carlyle?] Group, Halliburton; every one of those lying, cheating, stealing, deceiving individuals are in our country and we’re sitting here and watching the world pass by, people being bombed, and it’s about time that we have an intifada in this country that change[s] fundamentally the political dynamics in here. And we know every – They’re gonna say some Palestinian being too radical — well, you haven’t seen radicalism yet.” U.C. Berkeley Lecturer Hatem Bazian fires up the crowd at an anti-war rally by calling for an American intifada

7) “That Scott down there that’s running for governor of Florida. Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him. He stole billions of dollars from the United States government and he’s running for governor of Florida. He’s a millionaire and a billionaire. He’s no hero. He’s a damn crook. It’s just we don’t prosecute big crooks.” — Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa

8) “..And then there’s Rumsfeld who said of Iraq ‘We have our good days and our bad days.’ We should put this S.O.B. up against a wall and say ‘This is one of our bad days’ and pull the trigger. Do you want to salvage our country? Be a savior of our country? Then vote for John Kerry and get rid of the whole Bush Bunch.” — From a fund raising ad put out by the St. Petersburg Democratic Club

9) “Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don’t give a hoot about human beings, either can’t or won’t. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.” — The Village Voice’s Michael Feingold, in a theater review of all places

10) “But the victim is also inaccurately being eulogized as a kind and loving religious man. Make no mistake, as disgusting and deservedly dead as the hate-filled fanatical Muslim killers were, Thalasinos was also a hate-filled bigot. Death can’t change that. But in the U.S., we don’t die for speaking our minds. Or we’re not supposed to anyway. Thalasinos was an anti-government, anti-Islam, pro-NRA, rabidly anti-Planned Parenthood kinda guy, who posted that it would be “Freaking Awesome” if hateful Ann Coulter was named head of Homeland Security.” — Linda Stasi, New York Daily News, on a victim murdered in the San Bernardino terrorist attack

(This is only the first half of a list of 20… the other half includes such gems as Ryan being raped to death by a rino, or beating ‘every republican and independent I see’ with a bat, wishing harm on children, and yet another loathsome Dan Savage quote)

They live and feed on hatred.