Arguing about whether Donald Trump (or anyone or anything else) "contributed to" or "precipitated" a shooting (or any other event for which we seek to attribute blame) is kind of a pointless exercise in semantics. The concept of fault is a value judgment, not an objective assessment, and responsibility exists in the eye of the beholder. Those who claim an ability to identify a single, definitive causal relationship almost always arrive at a conclusion that aligns nicely with their existing biases.

That said, it's hard not to notice that the number of violent crimes motivated by animus—from Dylann Roof to James Jackson to Adam Purinton to Jeremy Christian—has been on the rise of late. And it is difficult to deny that the president, despite never openly embracing the hateful people who chant his name and wear his hat, keeps finding reasons not to disavow them, either.

After Charlottesville, I wrote that although white supremacists and their ilk have always existed among us, a patchwork set of social mores, until recently, did a decent job of marginalizing those people—or, at the very least, encouraging them to keep quiet. This resurgence of the malevolent forces that Donald Trump rode all the way to the White House might prove to be more harmful than any policy decision he makes while in office. Sometimes, the greatest dangers are those that have been around the entire time, waiting for someone who looks like a hero.

UPDATE, February 15: In response to several media reports, including one in which several of Cruz's classmates told ABC News that they had seen him march with RoF, Leon County law enforcement officials stated to the Tallahassee Democrat that they have yet to verify the claims Jereb made to ABC, the ADL, and other outlets. On Gab, a social network frequented by white supremacists, Jereb has asserted that a lack of sleep caused him to misidentify Cruz when those outlets asked him for comment.

UPDATE, February 16: The Associated Press reports that Jereb "appears to have lied" to reporters about Cruz's connections to the group. Politico has a blow-by-blow recapping how users of alt-white message boards worked together to mislead the AP, ABC News, and the ADL regarding this story. We regret the error.