The basest of the base

An 82-year old man is attacked in his home because politics

It was stunning that a QAnon conspiracy theorist broke into the San Francisco home of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and, upon not finding her, attacked her 82-year old husband, Paul, with a hammer. The suspect has been charged with attempted homicide.

(Here’s the conspiracist’s former partner weighing in on the state of mind of the attacker. Whatever his mental health challenges, the man sought to attack the Speaker of the House. Failing that, he hit Paul Pelosi with a hammer at least once, according to police, and Paul Pelosi required surgery for his injuries.)

The attack, which left the Pelosi family “heartbroken and traumatized,” said the speaker in a statement, is one more incident in a string of politically-motivated violence. This article, from Journal of Democracy, is a few months old but has some interesting points, including:

• Ideas once confined to fringe groups now find a home in mainstream media, which gives a patina credence to theories and information that may be patently false and inherently dangerous.

• Risk factors for more political violence include (but are not limited to) high-stakes elections (where power can shift); partisan divisions based on identity, and weak institutional constraints on violence.

• Two subgroups more prone to violence include

  • White Christian evangelical Republicans and

  • People who feel threatened by women or members of minority groups

Oh, but everyone is more violent these days, say people who can’t read. A chart from the linked journal article says no, at least not through 2018:

We are in tumultuous times but we have been here before, and we must keep our wits about us. Let’s let Denise McNair, former Berlin, Conn., town manager who is running to unseat an incumbent as state representative in the 30th, have the last word (and thanks, Jim, for alerting me to this):