Donald Trump is corrupt, dishonest, and stupid. Intellectually feeble and mentally unstable people drawn to political extremism have and will be inspired or driven by Trump and trumpism to say and do horrible things. Yesterday, a left wing extremist was driven by Trump and trumpism to try to kill people.
When the Republicans nominated Donald Trump last year it represented the unconditional surrender of the GOP’s intellectual, ethical, and moral standards. It was a huge victory for incivility, anti-intellectualism, and extremism. With the help of left wing extremists (and apparently the Russians), that victory was magnified in the 2016 general election, giving us the most extreme and uncivilized national political leadership we have ever had.
Republican leaders are going through the motions of condemning yesterday’s shooting, but sadly, they lack the moral and intellectual authority to make this condemnation useful. Bloviating profiteers in the rightwing media have already begun to undercut their credibility by using this incident to fuel the right wing alternate reality propaganda machine, which unlike the leftwing alternate reality propaganda machine, has a strong and lucrative foothold in the commercial media industry and a plentiful and vulnerable target audience.
Barry Goldwater was profoundly wrong! Extremism in the pursuit of ANYTHING in politics is vicious.