It’s a charming little ritual we have now. A man armed to the teeth decides to play "Action Hero" outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, gets tackled before he can ruin the appetizers, and within the hour, the usual suspects are on television performing a masterclass in Olympic-level jumping to conclusions. Before the suspect’s zip ties were even tight, the narrative was set: this was the inevitable, bubbling-over cauldron of "left-wing rhetoric."
Apparently, when a lone wolf acts out, it’s a "movement." But when a movement acts out, it’s just "a very spirited Tuesday." If we’re going to play the blame game, we should at least check the scoreboard. Because if rhetoric is a loaded gun, one side has been practicing at the range for a decade while the other is still trying to find the safety.
The "Laughter is the Best Medicine" (For Skull Fractures) Era
If you find yourself clutching your pearls over "incivility," it might be worth remembering how we handle actual, bloody violence when the victim has a "D" next to their name.
Take the 2022 hammer attack on Paul Pelosi. An intruder breaks in, screams "Where’s Nancy?", and fractures an 82-year-old man’s skull. The response from the "Law and Order" crowd? Donald Trump Jr. shared a "Paul Pelosi Halloween costume" featuring a pair of underwear and a hammer. Kari Lake joked about it on the trail. It’s hilarious, right? Until it’s your grandfather’s head being used for batting practice.
This wasn't an outlier; it’s the brand. In 2018, Cesar Sayoc (the "MAGA Bomber") mailed 16 IEDs to Obama, Clinton, Biden, and even CNN. The response? Pundits called it a "false flag" or a "hoax" to help Democrats in the midterms. In the modern GOP lexicon, "IED" apparently stands for "Is Everyone Distracted?"
Interior Design by Molotov: The 2025-2026 Escalation
As we moved into 2025, the "jokes" turned into a full-blown siege.
• The Shapiro Firebombing (April 2025): Cody Balmer scaled the fence of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s residence and threw Molotov cocktails inside while the family slept. He later admitted he planned to use a sledgehammer on the Governor. The response? A pivot. Narratives focused on the attacker’s anger over Gaza to frame it as "left-on-left" violence, neatly ignoring that a Democratic family was almost incinerated in their beds.
• The Minnesota Assassinations (2025): When a gunman impersonating police killed former Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, and wounded State Senator John Hoffman, the right-wing reaction was a masterclass in deflection. Despite a "hit list" of Democrats, commentators obsessed over the suspect’s anti-Trump materials to argue that conservatives were the real victims of "leftist" climate.
• The NYC Mayor Attack (March 2026): After an "ISIS-inspired" explosive attack near Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s home during a far-right-led protest, the focus shifted entirely to anti-Islam framing. The fact that a left-aligned mayor was the target was treated as a secondary footnote.
The "Gallows" Humor of Jan 6th and Beyond
We shouldn’t be surprised. We’re talking about a movement that watched a mob erect a gallows for Mike Pence and hunt for Nancy Pelosi through the Capitol halls, only to later describe those people as "patriots," "tourists," or "political prisoners."
The "incitement" didn't start in a vacuum. We have a decade of "Second Amendment people" suggestions, edited videos of golf balls hitting Hillary Clinton, and the infamous WWE clip of a president body-slamming a CNN logo. When you spend years telling your base to "knock the crap out of them" and promising to "pay the legal fees," you don't get to act shocked when someone actually tries.
Even the Home Team Isn't Safe
The most telling sign that this isn't about "rhetoric" but about raw, unchecked aggression is how they treat their own. When Senator Rand Paul was tackled by a neighbor in 2017—leaving him with six broken ribs and lung damage—you’d expect solidarity. Instead, years later, Senator Markwayne Mullin publicly stated he "understands completely" why the neighbor did it and called Paul a "freaking snake." Mullin then capped off his commitment to decorum by offering to fight a Teamsters President during a Senate hearing.
The Hard Numbers
Violence isn't a "both sides" issue in the way the Sunday shows want you to believe.
• A 2022 PNAS study comparing left‑, right‑, and Islamist extremists found that acts associated with left‑wing causes are less likely to be violent than those associated with right‑wing or Islamist causes.
• ADL’s “Murder and Extremism” reports show that in 2022, 2023, and 2024, all identified extremist‑related killings in the U.S. were committed by right‑wing extremists, mostly white supremacists and other far‑right actors.
• A 2025 PBS analysis summarizing multiple datasets concluded that most domestic terrorists in the U.S. are politically on the right, and right‑wing attacks account for the vast majority of fatalities from domestic terrorism.
Verified extremist killings in recent years have overwhelmingly been carried out by right‑wing actors, and the best available comparative research finds left‑wing extremists less likely to use lethal violence than right‑wing or Islamist extremists.
Data from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) shows that right-wing extremists have been responsible for the vast majority of extremist-related killings in the U.S. In fact, in 2022, 100% of extremist-derived murders were linked to right-wing ideologies.
The Missing Receipt
Here is the challenge: Find a case where a left-wing extremist committed violence against a conservative figure, and the Democratic leadership responded by mocking the victim, calling it a "hoax," or selling "Free the Perpetrator" t-shirts.
We’ll wait. Find it? We’ll publish it.
Violence is a tragedy, but selective outrage is a strategy. If we’re going to talk about the "predictable outcome" of political language, let’s look at the side that treats a hammer attack like a punchline and a kidnapping plot like a campaign slogan. Until then, maybe keep the lectures on "civility" in the draft folder. It’s hard to hear you over the sound of the Molotovs.
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