Exemplary essay on pervasive Republican incitement to violence,

The normalcy with which Republicans now call for acts of violence against Democrats is alarming. . . .

What I see is a growing ease with which Republicans use the media to call for violence to be committed against Democrats. And as far as I can tell, they have been allowed to do this without any consequences whatsoever.

Are these calls for violence harmless? They are not. In fact, there is ample evidence to suggest that even the most poetic calls for violence by conservatives in the media put them on a path to violence--a path that starts with insults, leads to death threats, and then ultimately arrives at actual murder.

The problem is not just incitement, but the lack of consequences for this behavior. In other words, while Democrats now enjoy a majority in the Congress, the culture of public discourse is still determined by almost a full decades of authoritarian conservative media dominance. . . .

What we are witnessing with these calls for violence is the radicalization of authoritarian conservatism as the prospects for electoral success diminish.

Just as the success of authoritarian conservatism in electoral politics led to the increase in foreign violence perpetrated by the Republican Party, the failure of authoritarian conservatism in electoral politics will likely lead to an increase in domestic violence perpetrated by the Republican Party. . . .

The violence frame, invoked with regularity and increasing boldness by leading voices of the Republican elite, should serve as a constant reminder that this latent authoritarianism has lashed out at our own from time to time in American culture. It has been a while since we have had a season of burning crosses, assassin's bullets, truck bombs, or clinic murders. But as new political alignments rise to the surface, I fear we may be heading for the rapids of domestic violence yet again.

In this respect, we must waste no time acknowledging that the authoritarian conservative violence frame is already far too prominent in the media and in government. We risk far too much by letting even one Congressman's call for violence go unanswered.