We Can’t Ignore the Many Warnings That Preceded the Shooting

We’ve seen a lot of Republicans and Democrats call for unity and peace in the hours after the shocking incident in Alexandria, Virginia on Wednesday morning – a shooting that nearly took the life of Republican Majority Whip Steve Scalise. And while we appreciate the sentiment behind those calls, we can’t sit back and pretend like this is something for which both right-wingers and left-wingers deserve equal blame.

The shooter was an avowed leftist who seemingly belonged to every anti-Trump group on Facebook. The targets were Republican congressmen. And it cannot be ignored that for the last six months (at least), the rhetoric coming from the various outlets of the Democratic Party – the mainstream media, social media, Hollywood, and elected officials themselves – has become utterly unhinged. That has consequences, and Wednesday’s shooting was not the first sign that the bus has come off the wheels. There have been warnings in the air.

The left likes to compare the current “Resistance” against Donald Trump to the Tea Party movement that rose in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, but they bear few similarities. You didn’t see Tea Party rallies turn violent, unlike the Resistance. Nearly every anti-Trump protest – be it in the streets, on college campuses, or at GOP town halls – results in at least a few arrests. Property damage, fires, riots, and, in some cases, actual violence towards conservatives and police have characterized the Resistance. And they’re comparing it to peaceful rallies where people dressed up like 18th-century patriots? Absurd.

As a way of mocking conservative media and demonstrating how terrible Trump is, a few articles and TV comedy programs pointed out last week that at this point in Obama’s first term, Fox News was blasting the former president for preferring Dijon mustard on his hot dog. The insinuation is that Trump’s collusion with Russia and all the rest is so much worse than anything his predecessor ever did.

But you can look at it another way, now can’t you? For all the talk over the years about how insidious conservative media is – how much hate it supposedly spreads – it’s nothing compared to the way the networks and newspapers are going after Trump. And it might be worth remembering that while Obama definitely asked for Dijon mustard, there is as yet ZERO proof that Trump had anything to do with the Russian hacks of 2016.

This loud drumbeat of accusation has been leading to bloodshed for a long time. The Democrats are building a case for which there can be no satisfying conclusion. And that’s going to leave a lot of people angry and frustrated, having heard for months that the president is a treasonous, racist liar who stole the election with the help of Vladimir Putin.

Let’s have unity and peace, by all means. But to get there, the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, Rachel Maddow, and the Democrats are going to have to change their fake news ways.

And we don’t think they’re willing to even consider it.