It couldn’t be more obvious that highly disturbed individuals such as the deranged gunman using baseball-playing Republican congressmen for target practice on Wednesday can come from all political, ethnic, racial and religious categories; nevertheless, it’s high time for some introspection from the left. This should be a wake-up call for them. Indeed, for the sake of our country, it had better be.

This man came from the extreme end of Trump Derangement Syndrome, but he didn’t emerge entirely by himself. He came from a petri dish that we are all submerged in, nurturing hate as never before in most of our lifetimes.

We need look no further than yesterday’s grilling of Jeff Sessions by the Senate Intelligence Committee. This investigation is putatively about Russian interference in our election, but we learned nothing about that. Not a thing. In fact, it was barely mentioned. The entire event was used as a means to “get Trump” and/or his associates. Senators like Heinrich ooze hate, obviously playing to a likeminded crowd. It is indeed a “witch hunt” and any reader ofThe Crucible knows where that leads.

Meanwhile, just this past weekend, here in Los Angeles, we had our annual gay pride celebration. But it didn’t seem to be about pride at all, only about unremitting attacks on our president (and by implication anyone Republican), as if everyone in the streets would have been delighted to see a replay of Kathy Griffin‘s nauseating decapitation or the denouement of the current Shakespeare in the Park production where a Trump/Caesar is beheaded nightly. (Ironically, Trump was on record for gay marriage long before Clinton or Obama, but facts mean nothing to the pussy-hatted.)

And then there were the wild accusations of anti-Semitism when nearly half of Trump’s family is Jewish and — as it turned out — of the few such incidents that have occurred since his inauguration none were committed by his supporters. In fact, they all came from the left. This was, of course, barely reported. It didn’t fit the narrative of hate.

And this is to omit the most horrifying examples of all — the absolutely despicable behavior toward conservatives on our campuses. It’s like the return of the Brown Shirts.

Sense a pattern?

I used to be on the left and remember well the incantations of “by any means necessary” or the “ends justify the means.” No, they don’t. The means become the ends.

Robespierre is alive and well in 2017 USA.

This pathetic character in Alexandria is, now was, the left’s ungoverned id. By any means necessary — that’s for sure. They will undoubtedly try to shove him under the rug as quickly as possible, just one more aberrant individual to be forgotten, just one obscure Bernie volunteer gone bad. Sanders did his best to separate himself within minutes of the revelation. Yes, it’s undoubtedly true that this was just one rotten apple, but it’s also true that only five years ago Bernie was recommending Venezuela — now ground zero for starvation, kidnapping and murder — as a path for us to emulate.

Something has gone wrong here — deeply wrong.

Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media. His latest book is I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already.