First things first: Bombing people is bad. Sending bombs through the mail is bad. Sending ricin through the mail is bad. Mailing inert, harmless objects that are designed to look like bombs or ricin or something else that can kill people, to sow fear and confusion, is bad. I don’t care what your motives are. I don’t care how you rationalize it. I don’t care how much you hate the policies and opinions of the people you’re targeting. It’s terrorism, and if you do it, you deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. You’ll find people who are willing to defend you, while denying they’re defending you — “Hey, I’m not saying it’s right, but wouldn’t we all be better off with [fill in the blank] six feet under?” — but I’m not one of them.

It’s been over 24 hours since this latest bomb scare began, which is approximately 86,400 news cycles. Right now, the only thing we know for sure is that somebody’s sending bombs, or possibly fake bombs, to various Trump critics. So far the list includes: Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Brennan (care of CNN), George Soros, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Eric Holder, and Robert De Niro. Yes, Robert De Niro. The list may be even longer by the time you read this. The return address on the packages is “Debbie Wasserman Shultz” (sic), and at least one of the bombs or bomb-like objects has an ISIS flag, or more likely a parody “Get ‘Er Done” ISIS flag.

I’m not a law enforcement professional, but so far this does not strike me as the work of a criminal mastermind.

Some of my more MAGAlicious acquaintances say this is a false flag operation, designed to somehow help Democrats in the midterm elections. Supposedly, somebody in the #Resistance is doing this. When I reply that this theory sounds kinda Pizzagatey, they say, “Exactly!” The great thing about a conspiracy theory is that everything proves it and nothing disproves it.

At this point, nothing would surprise me. Maybe the culprit is a Trump fan. Maybe he or she is a Trump hater impersonating a Trump fan. Flip a coin. Either one seems equally likely to me. You people have all lost your minds.

Or, it might not be either of those things. It could just be a complete lunatic with no coherent political goal. It could be some sort of bizarre prank. It could be Borat. I don’t know, and neither do you. At this point, the only person who knows why this is happening is the culprit.

One thing is for sure, though: The rules have now changed yet again.

Just two weeks ago, the feds nabbed a guy who was planning to blow himself up on the National Mall on Election Day. And the story barely made a blip. Somebody sent ricin to John Kelly and Susan Collins, and nobody cares. A GOP candidate in Minnesota was sucker-punched in a restaurant after a political discussion. Nobody cares. Less than a month ago, a howling mob was literally pounding on the doors of the Supreme Court. The media’s reaction: “Meh.”

In the past few months, we’ve heard stuff like this from Maxine Waters:

And Nancy Pelosi:

And Eric Holder:

And in response, our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters in the press just give us a shrug emoji. They just wave it away. Calling these people an angry mob is somehow a slur.

Does this mean Waters and Pelosi and Holder and the rest deserve to be targeted by terrorists? Absolutely not. It just means they should be careful what they wish for. A lot of Democrats have openly called for civil unrest. They’ve excused and condoned violence for political purposes. Well, this is what that looks like. If they advocate this sort of chaos and lunacy, they shouldn’t act surprised when they become targets of it. Maybe it’s too much to hope that they’ll think twice before they say such things again.

“But that was different,” mewl the libs. “Our team wasn’t speaking literally. Haven’t you ever heard of a metaphor, you rednecks?” Yeah, a metaphor is when a Democrat says something that you’d call treason if a Republican said it.

And of course, then there’s James T. Hodgkinson. Remember him?

NBC News: James Hodgkinson was charged in 2006 with domestic battery involving an incident with a woman. The case was dismissed. Mugshot: pic.twitter.com/uUVjzeNBgo — Tom Winter (@Tom_Winter) June 14, 2017

He’s the Bernie Bro who almost killed Steve Scalise, and tried to kill a bunch of other Republicans at their baseball practice. As far as the Dems are concerned, it never even happened. It has nothing to do with anything, according to them.

People have the right to be angry. They have the right to express themselves politically. But when they resort to violence, it’s not good for anybody. No matter which side of the aisle they’re on.

Maybe you can’t stop crazy people from doing crazy things, but you can stop yourself from condoning it.

P.S. Here’s a perfect example of how quickly the rules change.