This guy’s been working overtime on Twitter since the Scalise shooting to discredit his own side. Who am I to deny him some free publicity?

https://twitter.com/James_J_Devine/status/875070675106627585

The right started it, or something:

“I think it speaks for itself,” Devine said of the tweet on Thursday afternoon. “Yesterday’s events are the result of escalating rhetoric and vitriol that has been evident in our political system culminating with the election of our president and the chickens came home to roost, you know?”…

“I think some people will be shocked and offended,” he said, “and other people might be woken up to the fact that this is nothing that wasn’t invited by things like Sarah Palin’s crosshairs on Gabby Giffords before she was shot.”…

“If you want to behave in an uncivilized and violent manner, which I do not condone, but if you want to operate under those circumstances,” he said, “then you have to be prepared to accept those consequences.”

Mentioning Palin is how you know this is a troll, I think. He could have found dozens of fringe examples of random Republicans saying irresponsible things during the Obama years to tu-quoque but instead insisted on pointing to a famous case which even liberals have been forced to admit doesn’t fit this narrative:

Interesting that @FoxNews 'debunked' @SarahPalinUSA's @GabbyGiffords crosshairs, despite IT's A FACT that inspired me to #HuntRepublicans pic.twitter.com/qIRCZwTRG6

— James Devine (@James_J_Devine) June 18, 2017

Here’s the original 2011 crosshairs ad from Sarah PAC. Devine’s copy removes the electoral context (“Let’s take back the 20, together!”), naturally. Or maybe he’s just never seen the original ad and has been operating under the mistaken assumption that Palin really did inspire the Loughner shooting. If the New York Times could get it wrong for years, why couldn’t Devine?

Elsewhere this weekend, MSNBC host Joy Reid sent Steve Scalise a little “unity” candygram while he was fighting for life in the hospital. The message here isn’t as overtly “he had it coming” as Devine’s is, but…

Rep. #Scalise was shot by a white man with a violent background, and saved by a black lesbian police officer, and yet… #AMJoy pic.twitter.com/Qm96T90c6Y

— Formerly 'AM JOY' on @MSNBC (@amjoyshow) June 17, 2017

Only through the grace and bravery of a very forgiving police officer was such a lowly character spared from death.

Here’s Charles Krauthammer looking at the “climate of hate” with a bird’s-eye view. It’s not that the left hates the right or vice versa that raises the risk of political violence, he says, it’s the fact that both sides view every November in an even-numbered year as apocalyptic. If every election is a “Flight 93 election,” don’t be surprised when people start acting like terrorists and hostages.