The 'Radicalization' of Cesar Sayoc

First off, it should be said that I'm glad no one was killed. I don't know what went wrong with Cesar Sayoc's improvised explosive devices (the mail bombs), or whether the bombs were meant to detonate at all, but it's blessing that no one was harmed.

That said, I can't but help thinking that if the targets had been Republicans and Fox News there'd be no outrage or media investigations. When Bernie-supporting leftist James Hodgkinson opened fire at Republicans, almost killing Rep. Steve Scalise, there was very little leftist introspection regarding a Democrat Party "climate of hate" that contributed to the attack. I remember maybe two days of coverage on CNN, a few stories in the newspapers, and that's about it. There was no long national dialog on a so-called toxic environment. Here's the Google search results for "James Hodgkinson shooting suspect." There's one result for June 21st, but besides that the latest date for search findings are June 14th, the day of the shooting. I see a couple more results for the search "Republican congressional shooting." In October 2017, Alexandria (Virginia) Commonwealth Attorney Bryan Porter released a investigative report on the shooting, covered at the Chicago Tribune, "Gunman who shot Steve Scalise cased baseball field for weeks before rampage."

With the mail bombing attempts, along with the horrific mass murder at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue, the leftist media is exploiting the events to blame President Trump, Republicans, and their supporters for the violence. Some media leftists have been over the top with their accusations, especially Julia Ioffe, who yesterday claimed the President Trump had radicalized more people than Islamic State.

In any case, it's an awful moment on American politics. I've been teaching my classes this semester, and I've been focusing a lot on partisan polarization and the sources of current political divisions and dysfunctions. I've mentioned, for example, that we had frequent violence during the 1960s, especially the assassinations of President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King. I've said I hope things don't get as bad as they were then, but now I'm thinking they're just as bad. The murder of the 11 elderly Jews in Pittsburgh breaks my heart.

More later.

Meanwhile, here's leftist "investigative journalist" Andrew Kaczynski at CNN, for what it's worth:

The radicalization of an alleged domestic terrorist https://t.co/R5pSbDGyLk pic.twitter.com/n1XRCWbPl6

— CNN (@CNN) October 30, 2018