‘A very short jump to actual violence’

“If this continues, somebody is going to get killed.”

It’s been two weeks since I heard U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., utter these disturbing words. He sounded that ominous alarm more than once during a Nov. 10 interview with Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC’s “Deadline Whitehouse.” The words still run through my mind, the warning continually reinforced with unfolding events. The pervasive presence of America’s guns deepens the sense of danger.

Himes was discussing the danger posed by the violent language and images that have come to dominate Republican political discourse. Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., had just posted the now-infamous altered anime video in which Gosar kills fellow House member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and prepares to slash President Joe Biden with swords.

Also just then, the 13 House Republicans who voted for the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill were being assaulted with thousands of menacing phone calls, facing death threats that included members of their families, most of the calls coming from outside their districts.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, D-Ga., was leading that charge against her fellow Republican House members, calling them traitors to the party and describing the legislation they supported as “Joe Biden’s Communist takeover of America.” Treacherous. Twisted. Perverse. “We are a very short jump to actual violence,” Himes told me in an email when I followed up on his interview with Wallace for my last column, published Nov. 14. “If people like Gosar and Greene keep using apocalyptic language and conjure violence, violence will occur.”

Some would call Gosar and Greene marginalized, fringe figures who pose little threat. Marginalized? Fringe? Really? When the House subsequently voted to censure Gosar and strip him of his committee assignments, the Republican Party rallied around him, as they have around Greene, who has also been stripped of her committee assignments.

Greene, a Q-Anon supporter, posted a photo of herself on Facebook holding a gun against images of Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Rashida Tlaib, DMich. This was among many other expressions of hate she made before her election to Congress, including support for the assassination of House speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA.

This Republican move in the direction of hate, violence, and Orwellian doublespeak puts party above country, attacks our Constitution, promotes the destruction of democracy, and signals the end of America as we know it. Among its many scary manifestations was the August 2017 Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, and most horribly, the Insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

All this reflects Trump’s MAGA Universe. But it’s not just Trump anymore. It’s the entire Republican Party that has re-fashioned itself in the image of Trump. The Republican Party that was once viewed as the Party of Lincoln is no more. It has become, fully and completely, the Party of Trump.

“If leaders like Kevin McCarthy can’t be clear that any form of violence is unacceptable, someone is going to get hurt,” Himes wrote in his email. “People listen to leaders. And less responsible people will act violently if they feel they have been given permission to do so.”

But McCarthy has signaled the opposite. He encourages the party to support Gosar and Greene. If he becomes House Speaker, he says, he will reinstate their committee assignments. He offers no criticism of them.

Meanwhile, Republicans such as Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, whose conservative credentials in the context of the former Republican Party are impeccable, have become pariahs. Republican leadership is severe in its punishment of them for putting country above party, and for demonstrating that, in taking their oaths of office, they have sworn allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, and not to Trump.

On Jan. 6, 2021, our country faced its biggest existential threat since the Civil War. But Republicans refuse to acknowledge the Trump-instigated attempt to overthrow our democratically elected government — based on the biggest of Trump’s tens of thousands of lies — was an Insurrection.

In true Orwellian fashion, they’re in the process of redefining insurrection as patriotism, just as they now exalt vigilantism by making teenager Kyle Rittenhouse a hero for killing two people with a military-style assault weapon and wounding a third.

Himes’ warning: somebody will be killed.

Greatest casualty: Death of our democracy.