Consider this a forlorn cry for exposition and specificity. Will someone, somewhere, in the name of all that is good and true, tell me what the bloody rules are for determining whether rhetorical bombast counts as mere everyday hyperbole or as the ineluctable prerequisite to political violence? I have looked and looked for a pattern, but, despite having pried up the floorboards and scoured the attic and investigated every last corner of the basement, I can find no standard that I find satisfactory. Surely, there must be more undergirding all this than just Calvinball?
Yesterday, Donald Trump’s life was threatened for the second time in two months. In response, I have seen two lines emerge from the media. The first is that the attempt should not be blamed on his critics but on the would-be shooter, who is crazy. The second line is that, by some extraordinary alchemy that I evidently lack the intellect to comprehend, the blame for his having been targeted lies with Trump himself. As a writer who has uniformly rejected the idea that political arguments ought to be blamed for the actions of vicious criminals, I am in instinctive agreement with the first approach. But I am also aware that, unlike myself, those who are currently advancing that case do not do so consistently. Thus, my inquiry: If my one-size-fits-all rule has not been adopted writ large, then what has been?
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