>
Article snippet: The violence has come regularly for years, in one politically charged spasm after another. A member of Congress shot through the head in Tucson. Assaults on the Holocaust Museum, a Planned Parenthood office and the Family Research Council, a socially conservative group. Gunmen targeting black churchgoers in South Carolina, Indian immigrants in Kansas and police officers in New York and Texas. The attempted slaughter of Republican lawmakers on a baseball diamond outside Washington was less an aberration than the latest example of a grim trend, widely remarked upon by leaders in both parties, but never slowed or stopped. And with lawmakers, legislative aides and Capitol police officers hospitalized on Wednesday, a process of mourning and recrimination unfolded as a kind of familiar ritual, with a somber statement from the president and bipartisan denunciations of violence quickly giving way to finger-pointing and blame on social media. Even high-level gestures of conciliation, including from President Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders, did little to blunt the sense that America’s civic culture is consumed with anger and breaking down — though mental illness sometimes makes it impossible to say exactly what leads to violence. To survivors of past attacks, the shooting in Virginia — perpetrated by a 66-year-old former Sanders supporter who expressed rage over Mr. Trump’s presidency — came as a sign that the worst might still be ahead. Former Senator John C. Danforth, ... Link to the full article to read more