In September of 1934, American journalist William Shirer went to Nuremberg in Germany to see first-hand the political mania that was overtaking that country. He later wrote:

I was a little shocked at the faces. When Hitler finally appeared on the balcony for a moment. They reminded me of the crazed expressions I once saw in the back country of Louisiana on the faces of some Holy Rollers...they looked up at him as if he were a Messiah, their faces transformed into something positively inhuman.

"We are strong and will get stronger,” Hitler shouted at them through the microphone, his words echoing across the hushed field from the loudspeakers. And there in the flood-lit night, massed together like sardines in one mass formation, the little men of Germany who have made Nazism possible achieved the highest state of being the Germanic man knows: the shedding of their individual souls and minds—with the personal responsibilities and doubts and problems—until under the mystic lights and at the sound of the magic words of the Austrian they were merged completely in the Germanic herd.

To borrow a phrase from The Master, it's not dark yet, but it's getting there. From the BBC:

Sporting a Make America Great Again cap, the man shoved and swore at the BBC's Ron Skeans and other news crews before being pulled away. Mr Skeans said the "very hard shove" came from his blindside. "I didn't know what was going on." Mr Trump saw the attack and confirmed Mr Skeans was well with a thumbs up after it happened.

Nobody who has attended one of these angry wankfests can be surprised this happened. This is especially true of anyone who's spent time in the press pens that are placed strategically in the back so the president* can direct the wrath of his followers at them easily. Hell, Katy Tur of NBC News had to have the Secret Service walk her out of the building at one of these. The obvious potential for violence is one of the things that fill the arenas, and the members of the media are the obvious (and perennial) targets.

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With that in mind, I'd like to highlight another portion of Monday night's manic episode in El Paso, because it's yet another example of the delight El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago takes in running around a powder magazine with a blowtorch.

This would not have been a good scene, his wife saved him darling. This would be inappropriate. I think she was right, but the governor stated that he would even allow a newborn baby should come out into the world and wrapped the baby and make the baby comfortable and then talk to the mother and talk to the father and then execute the baby.

Execute millions of innocent, beautiful babies are counting on us to protect them and we will. That is why. Last week I called on Congress with you a great congressman over there. Thank you fellas to immediately pass legislation prohibiting extreme late term abortion, and that certainly is extreme. Many people never even heard ...I mean, did you ever hear of anything like this?

This passage is, of course, a bloodthirsty distortion of what Governor Ralph Northam's position really is. ("Execute millions of innocent, beautiful babies"?). It is pure abortion porn—not to be confused with the human-trafficking porn in which he indulged in another part of the speech. But that's the least of its grotesqueries. This is an appeal to a movement that already has a body count built up through clinic bombings, clinic shootings, and the assassination of doctors and clinic personnel. That's not even to mention the vandalism, arson, and stalking that have been visited on these clinics and their employees. He starts talking about Northam's "executing" beautiful, innocent babies and somebody out there with a gun may postpone his trip to Comet Pizza in D.C. and make a side trip to Richmond instead.

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As the campaign heats up—and, especially, if it looks like he might lose—this is all going to get worse and not better. If the investigative nets tighten up around himself and his family, there's no telling what he'll summon up as a distraction. All of which leads me to recommend Mountaineer Mike Tomasky's latest in The Daily Beast:

I am saying, though, that Democrats should stop pretending they can unite the country. They can’t. No one can. What they can do, what they must do, is assemble a coalition of working- and middle-class voters of all races around a set of economic principles that will say clearly to those voters that things are going to be very different when they’re in the White House...

Is it kind of sad that unity rhetoric has no place in today’s politics? Sure. But the best way to unite the country, to the extent that such is possible anymore, is to win the White House and Congress and start passing laws and imposing rules that will help regular people again. And I'm all for reducing polarization--I just about it--but that's a project that will need 20 years, and besides, reducing polarization requires defeating extremist radicalism. That requires pugnacity. Let the disunion begin.

Honestly, I don't know how many chances we all have left.

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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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