Misillusioned

 "Spray of bullets shatters nation's illusion of security" says the BBC's headline.

The illusion of security and safety in American politics – built over decades - has been dramatically shattered.

Anyone who was under any illusions that American politics has anything remotely resembling security and safety hasn't been paying much attention. Threats of violence, and actual violence, against politicians has been a constant background hum for some time now, with Democrats and Republicans blaming the other, while refusing to see the parts that their own rhetoric about "battles between Good and Evil," "the future of the nation" and "existential threats" play in creating this environment.

And the way media in the United States tends to work isn't helping anything. Upon learning that the person named as the shooter may have donated $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project through another group called ActBlue, Reuters contacted both groups for comment. What is Reuters expecting them to say, other than some guy by that name donated about enough money for a fast-casual lunch a couple of years ago? What are these groups going to be able to add to the conversation, other than helping to make themselves targets for the already burgeoning set of conspiracy theories growing up around this? Which will lead to more threats and likely more violence. (Which, apparently, will not be learned about by anyone at the BBC.)

As the American public has come to see politics as higher and higher stakes, and an ethos of "if you're not with us, you're against us" has become common. the conflation of political opposition, or even neutrality, and deliberate harm/violence has grown. And it's dangerous to insist on seeing someone who understands one to be willfully perverse, or even Evil, as well-meaning. And so both sides find themselves responding to what they demand be seen as extreme positions; up until the moment they adopt those positions themselves. Once people start sincerely buying into the idea that a victory for the other side's candidate will literally jeopardize the future of the nation (not to mention the future of the believer and the people they care about), then violence becomes a reasonable course of action, specifically because it's seen as a response to prior violence.

Neither the Democratic or Republican ecosystems are able to take responsibility for the escalating rhetoric, because to so would be seen as week; the other side would pounce, and the activist class that both parties rely on to keep the public engaged with them would walk away. And fundraising, considered a requirement for any chance at electoral success, requires the appearance of a chance at electoral success. A party seen as unwilling to go almost to the absolute edge would lose the funding it needs to push its message to the set of largely indifferent people who become the margins of victory in "swing" states and districts.

When staying in place isn't workable, and going back completely unacceptable, the only path still open is forward. Even when that way lies bloodshed. It's been this way for pretty much all of the recent past. Security and safety haven't been illusions in this worldview; they've been deliberate delusions. A perusal of any functionally complete news archive would reveal this. But one would have to want to see it.