I remember when Justice Scalia died, and I saw a lot of celebratory 'tweets' from people I wouldn't consider extreme, and that was sort of the writing on the wall, in my mind.
If you believe someone's death is something to be celebrated, "someone should murder them" is a conclusion you can reach pretty easily..
And the second event of note, in my mind, was the Alt-Right guy getting sucker punched on camera. And again, the reaction was celebratory. Which to me says "Violence against people you disagree with is good."
I expect we're going to see more of this stuff in the near future. During the primaries, I remember all the explanations how Trump is "Just like" Hitler. Or sometimes worse than Hitler. Well, if Trump were worse than Hitler, and elected president...what should be the response to that. If Republicans are just like Nazi's. If Democrats are going to strip you of all your freedom and get you killed. These are caricatures of things people have gone to war over.
It's good for turning out the vote and selling newspapers/ad time, so it'll never go away. But I think political violence like this is just getting started.
If you believe someone's death is something to be celebrated, "someone should murder them" is a conclusion you can reach pretty easily..
And the second event of note, in my mind, was the Alt-Right guy getting sucker punched on camera. And again, the reaction was celebratory. Which to me says "Violence against people you disagree with is good."
I expect we're going to see more of this stuff in the near future. During the primaries, I remember all the explanations how Trump is "Just like" Hitler. Or sometimes worse than Hitler. Well, if Trump were worse than Hitler, and elected president...what should be the response to that. If Republicans are just like Nazi's. If Democrats are going to strip you of all your freedom and get you killed. These are caricatures of things people have gone to war over.
It's good for turning out the vote and selling newspapers/ad time, so it'll never go away. But I think political violence like this is just getting started.