For a variety of reasons, mass shootings, terrorist attacks, and other assorted tragedies tend to bring out the very worst in some people.
Six and a half years ago, when a crazed gunman opened fire at a constituent meeting in a supermarket parking lot in Tucson, Arizona, the liberal media collectively blamed a “climate of hate” fomented by Sarah Palin and the tea party for the bloodshed. Six people died in the shooting including a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl. U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was holding the event, was shot in the head. Facing a long road to recovery, Giffords resigned from Congress in 2012.
Within minutes of the shooting and without any evidence, the liberal media blamed “uncivil discourse” coming from the right for killer Jared Lee Loughner’s actions.
In truth, Loughner was a psychotic who had a fixation on Giffords, thought the government was trying brainwash the citizenry with language, and was obsessed with the documentary “Zeitgeist: The Movie.”
A friend from high school said Loughner “did not watch TV; he disliked the news; he didn’t listen to political radio.” A former friend from college described him as “very liberal” and “left wing.”
Loughner had no connection whatsoever to Sarah Palin or the tea party, and right-wing rhetoric had nothing to do with his actions that day. Nevertheless, the left blasted a narrative that tea-party conservatives — average citizens who in many cases were becoming active in politics for the first time in their lives — were somehow complicit in the slaughter.
The same thing can not be said of the gunman who opened fire on Republican members of Congress Wednesday morning at a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia. James T. Hodgkinson, 66, was a self-described Democratic Socialist and Bernie Sanders volunteer who was very plugged into Democrat politics. According to his Facebook posts, Hodgkinson despised President Trump and “Rethuglicans.”
On May 22, he wrote “Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.”
In another post, Hodgkinson demanded the removal of Trump and Vice President Mike Pence for “treason.”
He followed groups on Facebook like “Terminate the Republican Party” where he was a regular partaker of extreme left-wing rhetoric in an extreme climate of hate. In Hodgkinson’s world, Trump and the GOP are routinely described as racists, bigots, fascists, and Nazis.
Hodgkinson was not psychotic, according to his friends and acquaintances, although he apparently had anger issues. Friends describe him as a normal guy who was “a passionate progressive.” They say he was a”fun-loving guy” who “never backed down” and “stood his ground.”
He was also a political terrorist who wanted to kill “Rethuglicans.”
This left-wing terrorist had a lot of help on his road to radicalization.
Former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said on Fox News Wednesday that the shooting was “part of a pattern” of “increasing intensity of hostility on the left.”
“The intensity is very real, whether it’s a so-called comedian holding up the president’s head covered in blood, or right here in New York City, a play that shows the president being assassinated, or it’s Democratic leading national politicians using vulgarity because they can’t find any common language to talk,” Gingrich argued. He likely was referring to Central Park’s summer Shakespeare production of “Julius Caesar” that appears to portray the slain Roman dictator as Trump and to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who recently slammed the president for not keeping his promises using the expression “f— no.”
It’s well past time for Democrats, the media, and entertainment industry to examine their consciences and tone down their violent, unhinged, and dehumanizing rhetoric. If the Democrat media complex doesn’t stop its campaign of hate against Republicans, what happened in Alexandria, VA, Wednesday morning will happen again and perhaps keep happening.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member