An important reaction to Wednesday morning’s shooting of Republican politicians playing baseball in Virginia came from Congressman Rodney Davis:

“We can have policy differences but when you see rhetoric and stories about how policies are killing people, this could be a result of that,” he said on television.

Davis, a Republican from Illinois, was there on the field when it happened, appearing as a first-hand witness on Fox News.

He spent the majority of his five-minute segment explaining the details, offering supportive words to the injured and talking about the need for everyone to come together in unity.

Towards the end, though, he offered that very precise observation. It’s important we reflect on Davis’ words because they get to the crux of a major problem in our media and political discourse.

The extensive non-stop fear-mongering that’s been going on since the Republican primaries about all the horrific and hurtful things that the most basic of conservative policies will unleash upon the American people has paved the way for extreme reactions.

Donald Trump hates you! Republicans are going to hurt you! They’re out to do bad things to you! Watch your backs! Arm yourselves!

This isn’t just coming from fringe lunatics either. It’s mainstream.

To return to some “greatest hits,” here’s the American Civil Liberties Union posting to social media on June 1: “Pulling out of the Paris Agreement would be a massive step back for racial justice, and an assault on communities of color across the U.S.”

And don’t forget Globe & Mail columnist Doug Saunders writing on inauguration day: “If you thought you’d never see anything on TV as frightening as 9/11, this was it. But the consequences of this are far more damaging.”

If mainstream voices are arguing that Trump and Republicans are assaulting people of colour and causing more damage than 9/11, this is going to have a psychological effect on people.

It’s very similar to how the media covered Kellie Leitch’s Canadian values pitch and Andrew Scheer’s supposed hidden agenda.

The media wrote a whole whack of stories about how people on the left feared for their safety following the election of Trump. In response those on the far-left, such as Antifa extremists, began assaulting Trump supporters on the street.

They were pre-emptive strikes against rumoured violence, fabricated by an extremely biased media. This, as Davis pointed out, could have been what inspired the suspect to shoot up the baseball game.

James T. Hodgkinson, who has been identified as the shooter, was an Illinois-based volunteer on the Bernie Sanders campaign.

The picture that emerges of him, from those who knew him and by his social media posts, is of someone with very firm political convictions who occasionally had minor run-ins with the law. But by no accounts was he mentally ill and, according to an acquaintance who spoke to The Washington Post, Hodgkinson was "a passionate progressive and showed no signs of violence or malice towards others."

But that almost reinforces my point. You can bet that there are a lot of otherwise nonviolent people who, if their community was under siege by violent racists intent on causing immediate harm, would rise to the call of duty and take up arms to defend their neighbours.

In fact, we should darn well hope there are those people among us. If Nazis take over our communities, of course, we should fight to take them back.

The problem is, based on a lot of the rhetoric that’s driving the political narrative these days, almost half the country’s been labelled a Nazi.