The past year or so, whenever there's been a shooting directed at a target who was a MAGOP official or public advocate, the party has been very vocal about placing all their "outraged" blame on The Libs (tm) for supposedly raising the level of dangerous discourse because of their blunt, pointed language about the far-right damage being caused to the country.
There's a point to this, which I'll get to, but it requires the background foundation.
And yes, calling people fascist is harsh -- but when an action is literally among the three core tenets of the fascism playbook (xenophobia, the use of violence for control, and undermining other sources of power), it's hard to know what other words to use. They aren't threats attached to the words, but are just descriptions -- blunt and pointed, yes, but accurate ones. After all, when you send unidentified masked police in to arrest legal citizens without warrants and periodically even kill innocent people just because their skin is dark or sound foreign, it's hard to think of some polite term that says "fascist" without using that word that properly defines it. When you call the press the "enemy of the people" and get comedians thrown off TV because you don't like their jokes, describing that as a tenet of fascism is being accurate. Creating distrust in opposing bases of power, like elections and calling for judges to be impeached and arresting those who make court rulings you don't like is a core tenet of fascism. And referencing that is describing reality. What else would you call Trump saying, "I want to be a dictator. But only on Day One"? Or praising dictators Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Recep Erdogan, Viktor Orban and Xi Jinping -- someone Trump admired for making himself president-for-life so much that he pondered, "Maybe we'll give that a shot one day"? And the fix for such actions, as Democrats have been promoting heavily, is not to make outraged threats of violence but push its base and Independents and anyone upset at this extreme-right world to vote. Which is why Democrats have a significant lead in the "enthusiasm gap" and MAGOPs are trying to suppress the vote. That's what happens, too, when your approval is just 32%.
It should be added that Democrats are the party who have long fought for gun control. While the MAGOP not only become outraged at the concept of gun control, but the very first bill signed by Trump when he first took office in 2016 was to remove a law that blocked those will a mental illness from owning guns.
It should be added, as well, that if you don't like being called fascist, then don't support and enable actions that are -- literally -- among the core tenets of fascism.
On the other hand -- well, this could be very, very long with an abundance of examples that we all know, so I'll keep it to the barest minimum -- when MAGOPs are "outraged" at The Libs (tm), they cry out in fury at "the enemy of the people," and how much Democrats supposedly hate America, and how Barack Obama is from the devil and a Muslim and not born in America and evil. "Evil" and from the "devil" are descriptions that MAGOPs love to use. That and Commies and Socialists -- and make no mistake, that isn't something new, the former-Republican Party has been doing it since Joe McCarthy in the 1950s with "the Red Scare" and the House Committee on Un-American Activities. And the Blacklist. And the thing is, I am 100% sure that if you asked those who are screaming out about Commies and Socialist to describe what they think communism and socialism actually are, most of them -- if not close to all -- would not be able to describe it.
I feel comfortable saying they wouldn't because the things they scream about "communism" and point fingers at have next to nothing to do with communism and socialism. In reality, those political philosophies are about the government controlling the means of production and distribution outlets, abolishing private ownership. (And that, it must be noted, is a whole lot closer to what Trump has actually been doing, getting the government involved in partial ownership of 32 companies.)
And to be clear, no, a "Democratic Socialist" is not a "Socialist." There's that pesky descriptive word "Democratic" in there, which can't be overlooked, as hard as MAGOPs try to ignore it. That one word -- that one important word -- notes a support of socialistic programs but on a foundation of Democratic principles.
And make not mistake: the U.S. already has socialistic programs that Americans fully accept and most enthusiastically support. Social Security, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, government subsidies, public education, public utilities, the police, the military, public transportation, and so much more.
But for all the countless examples of MAGOP officials decrying Democrats and The Libs (tm) in brutal, dangerous terms of visceral rage (how can we forget in 2010 the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Nevada Sharron Angle calling for a "Second Amendment solution"), we only need take a quick look at the current TrumpCon event in Texas.
Which is the point. Not that this stands out from the MAGOP past...but that it doesn't stand out is what these high officials in the party are still doing today.
It was very Shakespearean. "A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury." But empty, unconnected to reality, grasping at just angering the crowd. Or as the Bard put it -- "Signifying nothing."
There was Senator Ted Cruz shouting out against "evil" forces in America, and comparing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Senate candidate James Talarico so vociferously fuming, riling up the crowd so angrily that a voice could be heard shouting out at a target of Cruz , "He should be shot!!" Another voice was heard calling the two Democratic officials "Devils!!!"
And there, too, was the MAGOP House Whip Tom Emmer, enraged in fury, giving a screaming-fiery, virulent speech about the Democratic Party.
"The only thing they can agree on," he hollered, "is their disgusting hatred of America and our great president. These people are sick...There is absolutely nothing democratic about socialism. By the way, these people aren’t even socialists. They’re communists and they’re anarchists and they hate our country.
And no, I am not exaggerating about the screaming and enraged with fury. Jump to any part of this speech by Mr. Emmer.
And even going up a notch higher, there was the MAGOP's House Majority Leader Steve Scalise. What he did was attempt to enrage the crowd into a hate-filled rage with his speech:
"The Democrat Party has been completely taken over by crazy communists. I call it the Bolshevik Revolution in the Democrat Party," Scalise said. And added that the Mid-Term election is a contrast between “common sense versus crazy communists”.
Or going up the ladder more to the U.S. Senate, there was Tim Scott of South Carolina, going full-throated, faux-God-fearing hate. As his own local paper, the Greenville News, reported --
"'The only way to keep dangerous, radical, weird out of the Senate is the United Republican Party,' Scott said amid some cheers from the audience at the event.
"Scott also spoke about 'dangerous' Democrats and how they 'hate what it means to be America.' He also took special aim at Texas Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talerico in a speech calling him 'terrible, all while channeling his inner faith and talking about God."
But reading words doesn't do Tim Scott justice either. Here's just 50 seconds of a four-minute screed.
This is just a very, very, incredibly short primer and the angry, unhinged vitriol that we know and have heard MAGOP officials spew for years -- before even Trump came to office, but ratcheted up to unprecedented dangerous levels. And they have the unmitigated gall to try and blame The Libs (tm) at raising the fury of gun-toting crowds to violence.
Have some outlier Democrats said things on occasion that were inappropriate. Absolutely. But even that -- "on occasion" and inappropriate by outliers -- is in a different universe from inciteful, hate-filled, red-hot furious, empty and completely unsupportable language that it is the foundation of the message for the MAGOP base.
But then, when you don't really have a message other than hate and scaring people, and your leader has a 32% approval and dementia, which is degenerative, unfortunately that's what you tend to do.
