Violent language and violent rhetoric can be a problem, but I do not think it is the main problem afflicting our diseased political discourse.*
The main problem, rather, is disingenuous rhetoric that coolly and calmly demands a violent response from anyone who believes it or takes it seriously. This talk may have nothing to do with guns or crosshairs or “reloading,” but it is the logic of life and death. That logic doesn’t just raise the possibility that some unhinged person on the fringes might take it wrong. It suggests and requires violent action as an unavoidable moral obligation.
Go read the rest. Yes, once you explain to someone that a certain person is murdering babies or treasonous, it does seem imperative to do something, doesn’t it?
One thing that is missing in all this analysis is that in this assassination, one of the dead is a Federal Judge.
I don’t know why this man’s murder is being lost in the discussion. What about this? Was he a bystander? Was he a target?
Judges are murdered as an attempt to end a prosecution or to intimidate the judiciary. Lone gunmen may assassinate politicians, but criminals and gangsters assassinate judges.
Nobody knew he would be there, he just stopped by to say hello to Gabby Giffords. However, shooting him will probably earn the perpetrator the death penalty.