The following things have been bombed or blown up in my lifetime—a partial list:

The NAACP office in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The home of Robert Robinson in Savannah, Georgia.

The Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

The finish line of the marathon in Boston, Massachusetts.

The Olympic Park in Atlanta, Georgia.

The U.S.S Cole in Aden, Yemen.

The World Trade Center in New York, New York.

The Oklahoma City bombing, 1995 Ralf-Finn Hestoft Getty Images

An SUV in Times Square, New York, New York.

Seventeen people around the country at the hands of Theodore Kaczynski.

The U.S Senate chamber in Washington, D.C.

LaGuardia Airport in New York, New York.

The State Department building in Washington, D.C.

Faunces Tavern in New York, New York.

Sol Hurok’s office in New York, New York.

The Senate wing of the United States Capitol.

A townhouse that was the headquarters of the Weather Underground in New York, New York.

The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

FBI agents investigate the bombing of a Birmingham church, 1963. Burton McNeely - TLP Getty Images

Twenty-one bombings in and around Birmingham. Alabama.

The home of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Montgomery, Alabama.

The home of Harry Moore in Mims, Florida.

The home of Robert Robinson in Savannah, Georgia.

The Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Temple in Atlanta, Georgia.

Grand Central Station and Radio City Music Hall in New York, New York.

Forty-two different women’s health clinics all across the country.

And that’s not even to count the attempts in which everyone got lucky, or the murderers were foiled by good police work, like the attempted bombing spree in Georgia and Florida in 1989, or Kevin Harpham's attempt to slaughter people marching in celebration of Dr. King’s birthday in Spokane, Washington in 2011.

So let us not be surprised by the news on Wednesday. The bomb has been as essential a part of American political history as were the knife, and the pistol, the high-powered rifle, and the rope. From The New York Times:

Explosive devices were sent to former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as to CNN’s offices in New York, sparking an intense investigation on Wednesday into whether a bomber is going after targets that have often been the subject of right-wing ire. The three devices were similar to one found Monday at the home of George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist and liberal donor who has come under fierce criticism from conservatives and conspiracy theorists.

None of the devices harmed anyone. Law enforcement officials said they were investigating whether all the devices were sent by the same person or persons. Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama, Mr. Soros and CNN have all figured prominently in the pantheon of conservative political attacks — many of which have been led by President Trump.

(Subsequently, a suspicious package also was discovered at the Miami offices of Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.)

Police shut down the area surrounding the Time Warner Center, where CNN is headquartered. Spencer Platt Getty Images

We should be grateful to the Times for not pussyfooting around here. The one thing that makes Wednesday’s near-tragedy unique is that there is a straight line to be drawn from George Soros’s mailbox and the CNN headquarters to the rhetoric of the President* of the United States. This is what makes this latest reemergence of the bomb different.

In the 1970s, there were no national politicians encouraging the Weathermen to involve themselves in the political process. Bernadine Dohrn didn’t get to visit the White House. Of course, in the 1950s and the 1960s, there were southern state politicians a’plenty who knew the people who were setting off the bombs, but the national government was pretty much on the other side; even though it was often dilatory in that regard, it got there eventually. (In 2002 and 2003, the last two culprits in the Birmingham church bombing were finally convicted by Doug Jones, now a senator from Alabama.)

New York Daily News Getty Images

The current president* of the United States trafficks in imaginary threats and encourages, by word and deed, feelings of dread and isolation and deep, familiar paranoia, the entire Hofstadter buffet. And there is an entire media infrastructure dedicated to reinforcing those feelings, 24-7, on all platforms of the modern communications industry. The Weathermen didn’t have their own TV network.

Between the time the bomb was found in George Soros’s mailbox, and the the discovery of similar devices aimed at the Clintons, the Obamas, and CNN, the rightwing media was alive with the notion that the attempt on Soros’ life was a “false-flag” operation aimed at discrediting the president* and conservatism in general. Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog did a splendid job chronicling one outburst of dangerous idiocy in the comments section of the Daily Caller, the ratty platform on which Tucker Carlson hung the entrails of a once-promising career; at Twitchy, Michelle Malkin’s old popstand; and in the deep fever swamp that is Free Republic:

I call BS. This is a setup by Soros to make it seem that the right is out to get him. Typical BS from leftists to play the victim. Notice how he is conveniently not home and that a "employee" found the package in the mailbox and then took it to the woods after opening it. Too many discrepancies.

There is probably as much truth to this as that moslem chick who claimed Trump supporters tore her hijab off on the subway. In fact, this is as True as Dr Christine Ballsy Fraud's accusations against Brett Kavanaugh.

I’m calling false flag. The Nazi collaborator is trying to get sympathy and distract from his evil which including organizing the current invasion force. What would be the point to planting a bomb near the compound of Soros, other than to just say it was there?

This constituency wasn’t created out of the air. It did not spring fully grown from the brow of the president*. It was carefully created and nurtured over the past four decades by a conservative movement bankrolled by oligarchs who were and are perfectly fine with having murderous, angry grunts out there doing the dirty work for them, the way the fine upstanding Alabama burghers of the White Citizens Council were content to have the Klan round up misfits to blow up churches and kill little girls.

A member of the Broward Sheriff’s office bomb squad inspects a suspicious package at the offices of former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz in Florida. Joe Raedle Getty Images

And then, in 2016, lo and behold, the perfect vessel for all of this carefully fashioned rage comes along and he wins a freak election, ends up in the White House, and now everybody’s shocked down to their expensive loafers that there’s a large body of their fellow citizens who believe in, and are willing to act upon, the doomstruck fantasies that they have been so conscientiously fed over the past 40 years?

Obviously, there will be more to follow on this. I’m inclined to believe that what we have here is something like the Unabomber or Eric Rudolph, the Olympic Park bomber who also specialized in blowing up women’s health clinics. Even that doesn’t bring me much comfort. Ted Kaczynski’s spree lasted 17 years before he was run to ground, and Rudolph lived on the run for nearly five years. But a lone-wolf bomber is infinitely superior to a network of them. I think. But, for the love of god, spare us from the horrified How Could This Happen Here? childishness that attends events like this. We all know how it could happen here. We’ve seen demonstrations over and over again, at rallies and on the street, about how it could happen here. It could happen here because it has happened here.

In 1927, a man named Andrew Kehoe blew up a school in Bath Township, Michigan, with a truck full of dynamite. Thirty-three children were among the 44 people killed there. So was Kehoe, who previously had been railing about paying taxes to support the school. Prior to setting off this bomb, Kehoe had killed his wife and two horses. When the police finally went out to Kehoe's farm, they found a note tacked to a fence:

“Criminals are not born. They are made,” it said.

Economic anxiety takes the damndest forms.

Update: As the day went on, we had new entries in the Andrew Kehoe Memorial Derby. These included Eric Holder, Andrew Cuomo, Maxine Waters, and an unidentified recipient whose package was shortstopped at a U.S. Postal Service depot in Maryland. And this is what Rush Limbaugh said, on 600 stations, nationwide. (H/T to Media Matters for the transcript):

Mrs. Clinton, it's your party, forgive me, that is encouraging this kind of thing. It is the Democrat Party that's home to all of these mobs. It's the Democrat Party -- Mrs. Clinton herself who said that being uncivil at this point in time is entirely proper and understandable. It's -- the time to go back to civility will be after the Democrats win. You've got bought and paid for operatives by Mrs. Clinton money showing up at Trump rallies trying to make them look like deranged Trump supporters. The Democrats are even paying people to draw swastikas on American flags and waving them around, made to look like deranged, lunatic Trump supporters. And so, in the midst of this atmosphere, we have this series of bombs that were supposedly sent today, exclusively to Democrats. And it just -- there's a smell test that this stuff has to pass, and, so far, a lot of people's noses are in the air, not quite certain of what to make of this. This is just -- it's not Republicans that show up, for example, at the offices of the Family -- what is it, some pro-life group's offices, some guy shows up with a gun and was going to shoot people, got caught before he was able to shoot anyone, Family Research Center (sic) I think, yeah. Republicans just don't do this kind of thing. Even though every event, like mass shootings, remember, every mass shooting there is, the Democrats in the media try to make everybody think right off the bat that some tea partier did it, or some talk radio fan did it, or some Fox News viewer did it. Turns out, it's never, ever the case. Not one of these bombs went off. And if a Democrat operative's purpose here is to make it look like, hey, you know, there are mobs everywhere, the mobs are not just Democrat mobs. I mean, look at this, you've got people here trying to harm CNN, and Obama, and Hillary and Bill Clinton, and Debbie blabbermouth Schultz. It just -- it might serve a purpose here.

This country has withstood campaigns of internal terrorism, including bombings, before. It has withstood bombing campaigns that, in the face of all available evidence, were blamed on "outside agitators." But we haven't seen an attempted bombing campaign in the context of a rapid-response national political disinformation apparatus. The country just isn't built for that.

Update 2 (2:38 p.m.): Prior to Wednesday afternoon, the president*'s only response to the events of the day was to retweet a banal condemnation from Vice President Mike Pence. However, at about 2:15 p.m., the president* finally weighed in with a statement at the White House, in which he said this, and his tongue did not turn to fire, which proves their is no God.

In these times, we have to unify. We have to come together and send one clear, unified message that acts of political violence or threats of political violence of any kind have no place in the United States of America.

He has a rally Friday night in Charlotte.

We'll see.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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