Really? I'm the one who began with the 'record numbers at every level of government' nonsense? Oh wait, that was the author of the article.

Of course Senate numbers don't mean much if anything because there's only races in a limited number of states each time. But 'record numbers at every level of government' manages to put two stupid and instantly disproven hyperboles (also if you interpret 'numbers' as electoral college votes / Senate seats, by the way) in the space of seven words, neither of which was even required for the point at hand. Which I believe I already mentioned in the previous post, so it's funny how you throw in the 'persist in the delusion that those numbers have any legal meaning whatsoever' bit. The whole point is that since the numbers don't matter anyway, why bother to lie about them in such a transparent way? Which, yeah, very much reminiscent of Trump's thing about the Inauguration Day crowd size, and many other things since.

Now you're just spouting random insults? I expect better from you than that.

Yes, it certainly is. Funny, isn't it, how I actually agree with the parts of the article that aren't nonsense? I'm sure there are other articles on the same general theme that I actually could have subscribed to with few if any disagreements.

Of course Pelosi and the rest of the leadership are mudslinging, and constantly attacking Trump and Republicans in an ugly partisan way. But that is pretty standard fare in American (or other) politics, and still a long way from hoping that someone resorts to violence, much less actually encouraging that. I don't believe for a moment that either party's leadership has the intention of encouraging violence against the other side. I quite agree with the author that unstable individuals may resort to violence as a result of polarization, even so, but as for the leaders' intent, no. And I happen to think that that is a very important distinction.

The 'I want you armed' thing doesn't ring a bell, but as for the crosshairs thing, you're right that she didn't deserve the crap she got for that.

I didn't mean to link Loughner to the Tea Party at all, I was just pointing out that 'hates GW Bush' doesn't mean you're left-wing, and taking the first example that came to mind. But okay, your interpretation is reasonable enough, my bad for poor phrasing.


Uh, if you're saying that the right reaction to things like what happened in DC this morning is to have more violence and slowly move towards civil war, then fuck no. If not, and I sure hope not, I'm not really sure what you are trying to say here.

I was not talking about actual acts of political violence, and neither was the author, having written this article as Joe said about 10 days ago. It's about political demonization and how this can lead unstable individuals into political violence. Which, absolutely, both sides are very much guilty of.

But as for your paragraph, that's basically a long way of saying 'people who do bad stuff aren't on my side therefore my side never did any bad stuff', which while I guess logically sound is also pretty useless. We are fortunately still a long way off from the point where people on one side or the other hear about acts of political violence and go 'oh well done, I really identify with that guy and what he's done!'. Which is one of the many reasons why the Nazi-era comparisons are stupid.