When A Cigar Is Just A Cigar

Tim Wise at Medium:

For several days conservative commentators suggested or even outright insisted that the bombs were likely hoaxes sent by liberals or antifa so as to discredit the right in time for the mid-terms.

Among the right-wing pundits pushing this line were Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Mike Flynn Jr., Frank Gaffney, Kurt Schlichter, Candace Owens, Lou Dobbs, Laura Loomer and Dinesh D’Souza, among others.

Limbaugh, for his part, went further than merely denying the conservative provenance of the recent bombs, actually suggesting that bombings and terrorism are things that right-wingers simply don’t do. Which is totally true, except for:

Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols

Or Eric Rudolph

Or Joe Stack

Or Lawrence Michael Lombardi

Or anti-abortion extremists like Michael F. Griffin, Paul Hill, John Salvi, Robert Dear, James Kopp, Justin Carl Moose, Scott Roeder, Shelley Shannon, Paul Ross Evans, Matt Goldsby, Jimmy Simmons, Kathy Simmons, Kaye Wiggins, Patricia Hughes, Jeremy Dunahoe, Bobby Joe Rogers, Francis Gradyand Ralph Lang among others

Or anti-Muslim arsonists like Bruce and Joshua Turnidge

Or James David Adkisson

Or neo-Nazi Wade Michael Page

Or Byron Williams

Or the right-wingers involved in at least 60 bombing, shooting and/or terror plots in the ten years following Okahoma City, including:

Charles Ray Polk

Willie Ray Lampley

Cecilia Lampley

John Dare Baird

Joseph Martin Bailie

Ray Hamblin

Robert Edward Starr III

William James McCranie Jr.

John Pitner

Charles Barbee

Robert Berry

Jay Merrell

Brendon Blasz

Carl Jay Waskom Jr.

Shawn and Catherine Adams

Edward Taylor Jr.

Todd Vanbiber

William Robert Goehler

James Cleaver

Jack Dowell

Bradley Playford Glover

Ken Carter

Randy Graham

and the list goes on.

The problem is not “angry rhetoric on both sides.” It is not a generic “incivility.” And no, being spoken too harshly or made to feel unwelcome in a restaurant is not remotely equivalent to receiving a bomb from someone who wants to kill you.

The problem is a president who has normalized a rhetoric of demonization and dehumanization since the day he launched his campaign.

When you start your political career generalizing about Mexican migrants being rapists and drug dealers, and you say during that campaign that you wish to shut down all immigration by Muslims, and you suggest your opponent should be jailed for using an unsecured e-mail server (even as you have continued to use an unsecured cell phone), and you refer to the media as the enemy of the people such that your most loyal fans verbally assault reporters at your rallies, you are the problem.

You, and all who empower you and embolden you.

It is time to put an end to this foolishness, beginning on election day and every day afterwards.