"The fact that a registered Republican shot at the Republican presidential candidate with the gun that Republican politicians have worshipped so much they literally wear it as a badge of pride and pose with it in Christmas photos like the weird family you warn your kids to bike nowhere near, no, that doesn’t mean that Democrats bear the responsibility for this attack and that Democrats have to adjust their rhetoric."
~ Kevin M. Kruse
"Now it’s the existential threat of climate change and a far-right politics that makes even the worst fears of a prospective Richard Nixon presidency seem tepid by comparison. The white backlash remains and is, it seems, eternal."
This bears repeating: "The white backlash remains and is, it seems, eternal."
Racism still fuels the engine of Republican politics, and many of us never intend to get over the ugly racism that determines our political decisions.
"The unrelenting pace of events echoes 1968, the standard for tumultuous years in politics, with the assassinations, an incumbent Democratic president who is unpopular despite his historic legislative accomplishments, and his party’s convention in Chicago. The backdrop is different. Then it was the Vietnam War, white backlash to the civil rights movement, and a generational moment as the baby boomers came of age."
~ David Kurtz
"Support for political violence is not evenly distributed across the population. Across all surveys, we find a consistent pattern. ...
Republicans are 2.5 times more likely than Democrats to support political violence. One-third of Republicans (33%) believe that true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country, compared with 22% of independents and 13% of Democrats."
The figures are from: https://www.prri.org/research/threats-to-american-democracy-ahead-of-an-unprecedented-presidential-election/
"We have to remain clear-eyed about where the real threat to our security and democracy lies. Today, that threat disproportionately lies with Trump’s MAGA movement, which has taken over one of our two political parties, and with Vance who is now aiding and abetting it. These conclusions are backed up by clear evidence."
~ Robert P. Jones
"Why would an assassination attempt make a candidate more popular. Because we live in a country where many people’s entire philosophy of life can fit on the front of a t-shirt."
~ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
"The news media proclaim the image of him with fist raised 'iconic,' begging us to behold him in all his majesty:"
~ Paul Waldman
"See the Reichstag fire; or Mussolini’s use of street violence; or the American tradition of bloody-shirt politics. This is what authoritarian movements do. They promote violence and chaos—and then use the spread of violence as a justification for their illiberal aims."
"Authoritarian movements thrive on political violence for a number of reasons.
1. It intimidates ordinary people who might otherwise resist.
2. It destabilizes institutions that are supposed to act as guardrails.
3. Because authoritarian movements are not bound by honor or norms, they can exploit any violence for their own ends.
4. Chaos is a ladder."
~ Jonathan V. Last
"The reason MAGA loyalists such as J.D. Vance are targeting people who have called out Trump as authoritarian, calling them 'fascists' and blaming them for the shooting, is because those call-outs have educated Americans effectively to recognize the danger we are in.
So the last thing we should be doing now is silencing ourselves."
~ Ruth Ben-Ghiat
"Two years ago, Congress considered banning 18-20 year-olds from buying AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles after the Uvalde massacre, and some Republicans were briefly open to doing so but ultimately blocked including a ban in the bipartisan gun bill signed by Biden."
~ Steven Dennis quoted by Greg Dworkin
"It’s just Orwellian to say that you’re emboldening violence by trying to stop someone from overthrowing liberal democracy and turn the country into an authoritarian state. And yet that is what the Republicans are saying in this terrible, terrible frightening moment. I don’t know that I can remember another moment in my adult life where I felt things were this bleak. But here we are."
~ Peter Beinart
"his vocal admiration for leaders known to be mass killers, and his violent attempt to overthrow constitutional rule in January 2021."
"Nothing in recent American political life resembles Trump’s call for 'Second-Amendment people' to kill Hillary Clinton, his mockery of Paul Pelosi after an attempted murder, his belittling of Gretchen Whitmer after a kidnapping attempt, the stochastic violence he directs against critics to intimidate them and against his fellow Republicans to keep them in line, the brutal language of his rallies since 2016,"
"We might be tempted to think that violence against one side must come from the other side. But the bloody genie, once unleashed, often stays close to home. Those who have made violence normal are especially vulnerable, because they will always have colleagues or followers who think they have not gone far enough."
~ Timothy Snyder
"Fascism feasts on violence. In the years since his own supporters attacked the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election—many of them threatening harm to Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence—Trump has championed the invaders, would-be kidnappers, and would-be murderers as martyrs and hostages. He has vowed to pardon them if returned to office. His own staffers have testified to the glee with which Trump watched the mayhem on television."
~ David Frum
#violence
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"•in 2023, House Republicans wearing AR-15 lapel pins on the floor of Congress; Representative Don Bacon (R-NE) saying his wife slept with a loaded gun after he voted against Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) for House speaker; or Republican representatives sending Christmas cards showing the whole family toting guns;"
"•the October 2022 tweet by Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. mocking then–House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul after a home intruder hit him in the head with a hammer; or Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s 2022 campaign video in which she promised to “blow away the Democrats’ socialist agenda” as she took aim with a rifle;"
"or his 2020 attacks on Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, who became the target of a kidnapping plot; or election workers bombarded with death threats as Trump lied that the 2020 election was stolen;"