As you’ve heard, an unknown person for an unknown reason sent crude pipe bombs to several Democrats this week. None of the bombs went off. None of the targets were ever in any actual danger. We don’t know the motive of this attack and we don’t even know if it was meant to be an attack. It’s certainly an act of terrorism either way, but there is no reason to believe, as of now, that the unknown terrorist actually intended to kill or maim the people whose names he wrote on the envelopes.
None of this has stopped the media from explicitly passing blame to President Trump and other Republicans. There has been little to no restraint on the Left in this regard. They have already determined the cause (anti-Democrat prejudice) and the culprit (Donald Trump, by proxy). CNN announced that the intended recipients of the bombers were “Trump’s targets.” Much ink has been spilled and bloviating done about the dangers of “divisive” rhetoric. Indeed, judging by the media’s reaction, you might think that this is the first example of (allegedly) political violence in years, or that every such example has been committed at the hands of right wingers. That, of course, couldn’t be further from the truth.
Let’s review some recent cases of liberal violence that the media, for some strange reason, never thought proper to blame on Democrats:
1) Ricin sent to President Trump and other administration officials.
This happened just a few weeks ago. It was in the news for a brief time and forgotten immediately. Of course, Trump was never in any danger. His mail is screened and there’s no chance that a letter containing potential polson would ever make it to his desk. But the pipe bombs weren’t any threat to their targets, either. The people screening Barack Obama’s mail aren’t going to hand him a suspicious envelop with a heavy object in the shape of a pipe bomb protruding out the sides. The fact that the attempt was a dud was reason enough to ignore the story in Trump’s case, but not in Obama and Hillary’s.
2) Attack on GOP at congressional baseball game.
An outspoken Bernie Sanders supporter went to the game with a hit list of Republican names. He inquired as to which party was on the field. When he found out it was Republicans, he opened fire. Rep. Steve Scalise was nearly killed in the assault. This was a politically motivated, pre-planned assassination attempt targeting dozens of GOP lawmakers at once. Yet the FBI called the attack “spontaneous” and Nancy Pelosi expressed deep outrage at anyone who might try to pin the blame on Democrats.
3) Mass murder of police at Black Lives Matter rally in Dallas.
In 2016, a murderous radical went on a rampage during a BLM protest, shooting 14 police officers and killing 5 of them. The media took great pains to clarify that the killer had nothing to do with BLM, liberals, or Democrats. Even though many prominent Leftists had spent years up to that point claiming that racist police were hunting down innocent black men and executing them in broad daylight, still we were informed that this sort of propaganda couldn’t possibly have anything at all to do with the killing spree.
4) Riots in Ferguson and Baltimore.
Violent chaos gripped the streets of Ferguson and Baltimore for days on end. Buildings were burned to the ground. Stores were looted. Cars were set on fire. Homes were vandalized. Innocent people were assaulted by mobs. With these situations, especially in the case of Ferguson, we can say without a doubt that left wing rhetoric fueled and encouraged the violence. Liberals and Democrats were the ones who spread the patently false “hands up, don’t shoot” myth, which became the rioter’s rallying cry.
But none of these terrible events prompted a national conversation about dangerous rhetoric. CNN never blamed Obama for the Ferguson riots or the Dallas massacre, even though he helped amplify the false narrative that motivated them. MSNBC never made Nancy Pelosi or Maxine Waters or any other Democrat politician answer for the shooting spree at the congressional baseball game. The media rejected the idea that anyone other than the specific perpetrators could be responsible. Only now have they changed their mind on that point.
I wonder why.