https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-violence-is-not-symmetrical/
Political media are constantly on the lookout for right-wing violence, to the exclusion of the menace on the left.
The city of Springfield, Ohio, is besieged. Bomb threats and shooting scares have disrupted municipal events and closed schools for days on end. The disorder has been attributed to the addled Americans who pay overly close attention to the Trump campaign’s rhetoric, which has recently been focused on promoting the claim that Haitian migrants are absconding with local pets and eating them.
This outbreak of menace fits within a rubric the mainstream press can intuitively process. Donald Trump’s supporters are forever “inspired to violence.” They are uniquely susceptible to suggestion, both from the Republican presidential nominee and his acolytes. The MAGA faithful are quick to threaten, harass, and intimidate Trump’s critics and pursuers. As a Reuters analysis published last year asserts, America is “embroiled in the most sustained spate of political violence” since the 1960s. But while some primarily nonviolent criminality can be attributed to left-wing activists, the “attacks on people — from beatings to killings — were perpetrated mostly by suspects acting in service of right-wing political beliefs and ideology.”
The second attempt on Donald Trump’s life, which took place on Sunday afternoon, is just the latest event to call this ponderous assumption into question. The alleged would-be assassin appears to be in some important ways similar to the gunman who shot off a portion of Trump’s ear and killed Corey Comperatore in Butler, Pa., in July. His efforts to advocate on behalf of Ukraine’s cause — going so far as to try to join the fight against Russia’s invaders (he failed) — suggest a desire to make himself a part of a mission grander than himself. While the July 13 shooter’s motives have not yet been firmly established, reports indicating that he considered any target of opportunity, including Joe Biden, suggest that he, too, sought out notoriety. Unlike Trump’s assailant in Pennsylvania, however, the would-be assailant in Florida left a paper trail suggesting that he was a highly impressionable figure radicalized in the support of progressive causes.