The question isn't whether MAGA Van Guy is nuts, since he clearly is. That's not the President's fault. The better question is whether the WH and the Trump media complex is pushing the crazy juice so hard that it's making unstable people more likely to be violent. /1
I've said many times that "lone wolf" guys who pledge to ISIS or to white supremacy or to anti-abortion violence are kooks who went looking for a cause. They have to go find the propaganda, and when they do, they mainline it. /2
The difference here is that really hateful stuff is coming in waves not from foreigners or fringe groups, but from WH-sponsored rallies, from widely-cited internet sites that have zillions of followers, and from a four-hour window of hot crazy known as "Fox in prime time." /3
No one in politics or wingnut media made this guy send bombs. Period. What they did, instead, was superheat the political environment and flood crazy bullshit into the information space so regularly that unhinged guys like this think they're being patriots by sending bombs. /4
We can all hope that this will make some of those people think hard about what they're doing, but it won't. And I doubt this guy is going to be the last guy to do something like this, especially as the administration unravels more over the coming months. /5x
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