Escalation and Evasion

Over the weekend, the Republican War on Everybody escalated when a deranged man - prodded on by years of Far Right demagoguery - broke into the California home of U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and physically attacked Nancy's husband. The details are not pretty. Quoting from Nicole Narea's reporting at Vox:

It’s now clear the speaker was the target of Friday’s attack. The assailant broke into the home looking for her, reportedly shouting, “Where is Nancy?” — echoing what insurrectionists called out when they breached the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 — and saying that he would wait “until Nancy got home” as he confronted Paul Pelosi. The speaker’s husband suffered a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hands that required surgery after the assailant bludgeoned him with a hammer. The attacker faces federal assault and attempted kidnapping charges.

It gets worse, because the bastards who pushed the violent rhetoric are now (of course) evading their accountability, blaming it all on the victim, blaming it on "urban crime," blaming it on everything but themselves:

Republicans have dismissed any connection between their rhetoric and the attack. Instead, they’ve blamed Democratic policies on crime and suggested that growing political violence may be the result of general anxiety around election legitimacy. Elon Musk, the billionaire Tesla CEO who was cheered by Republicans when he bought Twitter last week, has advanced a right-wing anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theory around the circumstances of the attack. Though he deleted his post, it remained on Twitter long enough to be amplified and repeated by many on the Right...

The conspiracy rumors hinged on the Far Right's homophobia, and was utterly unproven, and yet for days the Republican Party leadership and their Congressional candidates made jokes and insults at the Pelosi family's expense.

Never mind the reality of what investigators got out of the attacker's statements to the police. Via Julia Jacabo at ABC News:

The suspect accused of attacking Paul Pelosi told authorities he wanted to break Nancy Pelosi's kneecaps to show members of Congress that there are "consequences to actions," according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court Monday.

The new revelation came Monday as the Department of Justice filed federal charges of assault and attempted kidnapping against the man suspected of attacking Paul Pelosi, the 82-year-old husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, last week...

(The accused David) DePape was charged with one count of assault of an immediate family member of a United States official with the intent to retaliate against the official on account of the performance of official duties, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. He is also charged with one count of attempted kidnapping of a United States official on account of the performance of official duties, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison...

The attacker reportedly broke into the house - it remains a huge question why the Speaker's home didn't have tighter security - and confronted Paul Pelosi with the same threats and challenges that the Insurrection rioters on January 6th were chanting. DePape was caught with the same zip ties the rioters carried with them in case they caught themselves any congresscritters that day, and DePape had even bigger plans than just assaulting Speaker Pelosi (back to Jacabo's report):

DePape allegedly later told officers "that he was going to hold Nancy hostage and talk to her" and that he wanted to use the House speaker to lure another unnamed individual, the affidavit states.

The suspect also allegedly told investigators that he intended to break Nancy Pelosi's kneecaps if she didn't tell him the "truth" about "lies told by the Democratic Party" and said she would have to be wheeled into Congress, therefore showing other members of Congress that there are "consequences to actions," according to the criminal complaint...

DePape's agenda was to intimidate and injure a sitting Congressperson, especially the House Speaker who is technically the third-most powerful person in the federal government. He was motivated by the anger and ambitions that the Far Right have been openly screaming - to hunt liberals, to punish Democrats - for almost 20 years. And he hoped to target someone else higher on the GOP's Hit List than Pelosi herself.

This is where we are in the violent rhetoric constantly drummed and shouted through the televisions and video clips of the Far Right media. The George Tiller Effect in full display, where the demagogues on Fox Not-News push their Narrative of "Evil Democrats" that deserve punishment, and who then sit back and let their foot soldiers among their audiences do their dirty work for them.

And when presented with the evidence, those same demagogues laugh it off, claim "it wasn't us," and nowadays even joke about the damage done in their name.

Gods help us. This is a clear example of stochastic terrorism - the violence of extremism - and the Far Right fearmongers are going to keep escalating even as they evade accountability.

It won't be just the congresscritters next time. The goddamn wingnuts of the Fox-watching Proud Boys/Oath Keepers brigades are going to target ordinary Americans on a bigger scale than before, all because they were told to. And all because they can.