You know it used to be a criticism that the Republicans and conservatives would lob at the Democrats and progressives that the left wing was "violent." I'm not sure where this criticism came from, but it was a staple in conservative online spaces roughly 15 years ago or so. You'd go to a website or forum or something and there'd be rules of decorum - "no name calling or threats allowed!" "Treat each other with respect!" etc. And it was a standard go-to stereotype among conservatives and christians and such that "leftists" were always rude and devoid of substantive thought, and would instantly revert to name calling, insults, and violence in any given situation. Which was funny because of course these "rules" were typically only enforced against leftists, progressives, liberals, etc.
My how times have changed. Less than a generation later and all pretense of "civility" has gone straight down the toilet. It really is amazing how the character of online conservatives is the complete opposite of what it was just a decade ago.
The case of Craig Robertson is a perfect expaple, a 75 year old man who threatened to assasinate President Biden, and had the tools, training, and equipment to do it. The man seemed to revel in making public threats against Biden, Obama, and many other prominent Democratic public figures - which is illegal. That is to say, it is illegal to threaten anyone, but it's really doubly especially illegal to threaten the President. The Secert Service doesn't just ignore it when some lunatic with a sniper rilfe makes public posts about how he's going to murder the President of the United States.
But it's the conservative reaction to Craig Robertson which really gets me. During the Bush years, in the early days of the web 2.0 days, occasionally a news story would pop up of some insane right-winger making threats, planning a terrorist attack, or going on a mass shooting - and it would get universal condemnation from everyone on the right wing. All of the politicians, pundits, everyone would speak up loudly against it. Not anymore - now the most common reaction from a conservative is to celebrate the violence.
There always was this undercurrent of violence simmering just under the surface of conservative politics, going back as far as I can remember. 7 years of Trumpisim has brought that to a full rolling boil. These people have truly lost their minds to the point where they're defending murderers, criminals, rapits, and traitors. When you start making excuses for why the ex-prresident is allowed to break the law you know the shit is going down soon.
Get out there and vote, Yo. The crazies are just getting crazier every single day, if we don't stop them then no one will.
