It's not a conspiracy, just a critical mass. Perhaps it's going to far to say the dangerous lunatics themselves are taking over, but it seems to me that a growing number of demagogues are perfectly willing to encourage them in the interest of personal power, and consider it small loss if a few traitorous, terrorist, atheist liberal obstacles get killed along the way. As for civility, I understand too well; I used to excel at it, but it's gotten increasingly difficult as everything I espouse out of loyalty to God and country is claimed as proof that I hate both. The people you're defending and their supporters routinely accuse me of treason and godlessness as well as being a friend to terrorists, even if they have to lie to do it; pardon me if my response to that is too forceful. I think it started somewhere between the time the former Senate Majority Leader convened meetings in megachurches across the nation to launch a simulcast in which he called me and every other liberal "un-Christian" simply for BEING liberals, and the time he called judicial filibusters "unprecedented" despite having engaged in THREE of them.

Just step back and take an honest look at what the demagoguery is breeding. You're no fan of Palin, and I don't think it's just because she's as willing to speak without all the facts as the press was on the day of these shootings: She's a radical egging on other radicals, and that's dangerous whether or not Jared Loughner managed to remain completely oblivious to that for two whole years. Do we really need to wait until someone publicly proclaims himself to have murdered based on what his warped mind understood her to say before we admit that it's far too easy to take her rhetoric, and that of many others, as incitement? Sure, I use strong rhetoric, but I try hard, with what success I'll let others determine, not to dehumanize people or say things that even MIGHT encourage violence against them. Dangerous lunatics are still human beings, and I wish them no ill, nor do I recall ever saying anything to that effect, I just don't want them driving public policy. I don't put them in gunsights or wink at people who question their status as Americans while accusing them of being closet terrorists.