The violence I worried about in an earlier post is continuing, and escalating, as we move towards this decisive election.

I’m sure you heard about this. (gift link, no paywall for a while)

Assailant shouted ‘Where is Nancy?’ in break-in at speaker’s home, attack on Paul Pelosi

The husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was violently assaulted with a hammer during an early-morning break-in Friday at the couple’s San Francisco home, a chilling escalation in a string of violence and threats directed at political leaders across the country.

The suspect, identified by police as 42-year-old David DePape, was searching for the speaker and shouted “Where is Nancy?,” according to a person briefed on the case….

 
Just one more result of the MAGA Republicans’ encouragement of stochastic terrorism,

…Stochastic terrorism means terrorism that’s statistically predictable but individually unpredictable. In simpler language, it means that when Trump or his allies encourage violence — when they say the kind of stuff they say all the time now — it is not just possible that someone at some point will do something about it, it’s damn near inevitable….

 
It is the strategy behind the things I described here, though I didn’t use the label. It’s what lives behind my fears.

Violence

I know I have said here more than once that I believe the right-wing patriarchy, the white supremacist movement in this country wants me and everyone like me to be dead so long as we refuse to conform to their ideas of how human culture should be structured.

They don’t want feminists to exist, or queers of any variety. They are uncomfortable with creative artists and free-thinkers. They don’t like science because they can’t control it. They definitely hate people of color and immigrants who come from non-Western countries. Even a whiff of social democracy as it exists in European countries, which threatens the supremacy of rich white men, drives them into frothing rage….

 
It is disturbing beyond belief that Paul Pelosi had his skull fractured with a hammer by someone seeking his wife. It is even more disturbing that nearly all right-wing politicians and media stars are lying about the significance of the behavior and about the right’s encouragement of it.

They try very hard to turn it into a joke, but it could not be more clear to me that this is the result they want to provoke. “Where’s Nancy?” was also the cry of the insurrectionists on Jan. 6th, and those people might have killed both the Speaker and the Vice-President, given the chance. As I said then, we face those who will not hesitate to harm us if we refuse to conform to the cultural structures they desire.

 
From Charlie Pierce at Esquire:

Well, America, You Were a Nice Idea While You Lasted

The GOP have finally abandoned the last shreds of common decency, the rule of law and other American ideals.

…The public episodes are now too numerous to mention; violence—as any number of women’s health advocates will tell you—always has been marbled through it. Now, though, the violence is general and increasingly detached from reality. Over the weekend, watching the reaction to the assault on Paul Pelosi, which also was an attempt on the life of the person who is second in line to the presidency of the United States, I just gave up.

They are beyond anyone’s reach. They are beyond logic and reason. They left democratic norms and customs far behind decades ago. They are beyond political compromise. They are beyond checks and balances, and they have drifted off into the void of a space far beyond the Constitution….

 
The election hangs by a thread. I still have great faith in our ability to pull off many wins next week, perhaps enough of them to make a real difference. If that happens, prepare for backlash of many kinds, including further episodes of violence like this one.