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I’m old enough to remember when “violent rhetoric” was the root of all our problems, and crosshairs on a website no one ever saw was the reason for mass murder.

Of course, those were different times, times in which the president had a (D) after his name, not an evil (R). Since that important change happened, everything flipped – over-the-top rhetoric is no longer the domain of the fringe; it’s the currency of the mainstream media. Worse, it’s turned from heated political disagreement to paranoia and pure hatred, and it’s going to get someone killed.

The people on the political left didn’t just lose an election last November, they lost their minds. And their leadership has been exploiting that for power and profit ever since.

Immediately after their loss, Democrats did not turn introspective and try to discover why, after eight years of a personally popular president, voters across the country had rejected them in record numbers at every level of government. No, they turned in anger at those who beat them, and no one has had more of that anger directed at them than President Trump.

He’s the accidental president, in their minds, someone unworthy of even the basic respect for the office that used to be the norm in politics.

Worse, they are stoking fears to the point that even the casual observer is left with the impression they’re hoping someone “corrects” that accident.

How else can one interpret the left’s continual equating of the president to Adolf Hitler? What is implied in saying the man’s actions on an otherwise insignificant international agreement “is a grave threat to our planet?”

That last part was tweeted by none other than Nancy Pelosi to her more than 1 million followers.

Billionaire liberal financier and green energy profiteer Tom Steyer said pulling the US out of the Paris accord would “be committing a traitorous act of war against the American people.”

Supposed journalists stripped clear all standards to proclaim their outrage. “Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Rick Perry & Steve Bannon walk into a bar & the bar is the earth & it overheats & we all die,” was but one example of their calm “analysis.”

Celebrities and politicians all pronounced the president to be an enemy of the planet, of the people; a threat to life itself.

The Huffington Post declared, “Trump To Planet: Drop Dead.”

All this was made more ironic by the fact this gaggle of pearl clutchers had, just a few years ago, accused Sarah Palin of inciting the deadly shooting in Tucson that gravely injured former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.

HuffPo itself ran a piece entitled, “Words Have Consequences,” which preached on the dangers of over-the-top rhetoric. It read:

Today we have seen the results of this rhetoric. Those with a megaphone, whether provided by public office or a media outlet, have responsibilities. They cannot avoid the consequences of their blatant efforts to inflame, anger, and outrage. We all know that there are unstable and potentially dangerous people among us. To repeatedly appeal to their basest instincts is to invite and welcome their predictable violence.

Of course, we hadn’t “seen the results” of anything of the sort. The killer was a left-wing rabid hater of President George W. Bush who’d never seen the “crosshairs” on Palin’s website and most likely hated her just as much.

But if liberals believed what they were saying back then, what does it tell us about what they’re hoping for now? There’s really only one conclusion to draw: They want blood, literal blood.

Be it declaring the president a traitor, equating him with history’s greatest monster, or a danger to the continued existence of our species, the political left clearly wishes him and anyone who agrees with him on any issue to be a threat. And, in the mind of the unstable, threats, especially on that scale, must be eliminated.

Maybe they aren’t doing it consciously – though that I find somewhat difficult to believe given their insistence on the risk of heated rhetoric in the past. No, they want blood.

When Kathy Griffin made a sick video of her holding the fake severed head of President Trump, Secret Service agents didn’t reach out to her because they feared she was on the verge of scaling the White House gates to murder the president. They had to convey to her that her video could set off an unstable person believing it was a message to them, a call to arms.

After all, the head of the greatest threat to humanity, dripping with blood in a video straight out of the ISIS playbook, isn’t exactly a subtle message on its own. When marinated in the toxic media, rabid college campus and progressive political culture, it’s a dare. It’s a challenge. It’s a plea.

Leftists will say this is crazy, that their disagreements are genuine and their rhetoric is simply a reflection of the times and the president’s own words. That Trump ratcheted up the tone, not them. They have short memories for their own hypocrisy and their attempts to smear blood on their opponents’ hands after every tragedy. Or at least they hope the American people do.

Maybe they do. But that won’t absolve them if their chickens come home to roost.

It may not be an attack on the president they inspire. Maybe it’ll be a speaker on a college campus, or a member of Congress, or a local city council. Whatever the case, the hatred they’re stoking is boiling, and for the sake of fundraising and to appease their base, they’re more than happy to turn up the heat.

If they don’t mean for something awful to happen, let’s hope they find a piece of whatever conscience they have left and dial it down before someone gets hurt. That is, of course, dependent upon something awful happening not being part of their plan.