On Monday, a pipe bomb, most likely hand-delivered, was discovered in the mailbox of philanthropist George Soros's New York suburban home. The culprit was unknown, but it was just the start. Yesterday, as CNN anchors were reporting live on explosive devices addressed to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama, a fire alarm went off in the background. The anchors hurried off the air as the CNN offices in New York City were evacuated due to a suspicious package.

Soon reports came that more suspicious packages were also sent to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), former FBI director John Brennan, and former attorney general Eric Holder. The return address on the package to Holder, as it was for others, was for former DNC chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz (D-Fl.). And because the delivery address on the Holder package was incorrect, it was sent to Wasserman Schultz's Florida office, prompting an evacuation. Police later intercepted similar packages addressed to Former Vice President Joe Biden and outspoken Trump critic Robert De Niro; the San Diego building housing Sen. Kamala Harris's (D-Calif.) headquarters was also evacuated because of suspicious packages. Altogether, there were three evacuations and 11 bomb scares in the span of a couple days. We don't yet know who sent the explosive devices or what his or her motivations were, but we do know who the intended victims are and their connection to one another is no mystery.

The targets—predominantly the former and current Democratic leadership—were the very same ones at which Trump has aimed his vitriol since his political debut in 2008: Obama, the subject of the racist birther conspiracy theory, and Soros, the subject of an anti-Semitic one; Waters denigrated as having "extraordinarily low IQ"; "loudmouth partisan hack" Brennan; "enemy of the people" CNN; and Wasserman Schultz, whom he accused of "corruption." Even in light of botched explosives, there was no sign that Trump supporters would abate in their parroting of this invective bombast. On the very same day an explosive device was sent to Clinton, the MAGA mob at a Mosinee, Wisconsin rally howled "LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP!" Nevermind that the original offense—Clinton's potentially exposing sensitive information via e-mail—was the one Trump was guilty of, as reported that day in The New York Times, by making calls on smartphones, despite aides warning that they were not secure from Chinese spying.

As soon as reports on the bombs came out, the white knights of false equivalency galloped to the scene, brandishing swords of both-siderism. Former Vice President Joe Biden, offered vague and meaningless pablum: "This country has to come together. This division, this hatred, this ugliness has to end." Chuck Schumer took a step further, implicating liberals: "Make no mistake: Despicable acts of violence and harassment are being carried out by radicals across the political spectrum—not just by one side." Meghan McCain equated the explosive devices with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell getting heckled at restaurants. The National Review's David French asked if "there was any momentum for toning things down,"citing this week's bomb scares, as well a recent ricin threat to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and the 2017 shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.). "We are still blessed with relative political peace. But we shouldn't fool ourselves. That can change," French later wrote. "The late Sixties and early Seventies saw a surge of political violence on a scale that would shock the conscience of Americans today."

Herein was the issue: flattening political discourse to nothingness, as if the civil rights activists struggling for voting rights and white supremacists agitating to suppress them were on equal sides of the same coin. In the '60s and '70s, as today, it was fringe activists, like the Weather Underground, who engaged in political violence on the left, while on the right, the political violence, including police beatings and mob murders of non-violent civil rights activists, was openly sanctioned by establishment political figures. Sure, a former Bernie Sanders volunteer, as Press Secretary Sarah Sanders cited in defense of Trump, shot up a GOP baseball game, but Bernie, unlike Trump, doesn't offer incitements of violence as a regular feature of his speeches. There are, of course, loonies and extremists of all political stripes, but only the leaders of one political party have consistently encouraged extrajudicial violence, viciously attacked the free press, and advocated for the imprisonment of political opponents: the GOP.