Fool me once: How I overestimated the right wing

On Friday, I posted an item about the comment section attached to a Politico news article about how Sen. Harry Reid's wife and daughter had been seriously injured in a car accident. I highlighted the posted comments at Politico because I thought they were so disturbed and so depraved in the unhinged way they mocked Reid's injured family and openly wished he's been among the mangled wreckage. To me, the indefensible comments offered a window into the increasingly dark and hateful soul of today's conservative movement, which tends to view its political opponents as non-human.

Writing up the item I tried to go out of my way not to cast blame. While I did note the GOP Noise Machine long ago crank up the hate rhetoric way past 11, I didn't suggest there was a direct connection between the incessant filth that often passes for discourse within the right-wing media, and the blood-lust comments posted at Politico.

Big mistake on my part.

Because the same day I highlighted the unconscionable comments posted about Reid's wife and daughter, what did online right-wing nut Dan Riehl post?

“isn't It Time to Euthanize Reid's Wife”?

Then what did a RedState contributor write?

Comments on euthanizing Sen. Harry Reid's wife “deserved to be said”

And then what did Riehl write in response to Media Matters?

“I'd have taken a coat hanger” to Media Matters

For the record, I do think there is an inescapable connection between the violent hate posts that we see online, like the ones made at Politico in connection to the sad Reid story, and the bile that passes for content on right-wing blogs, AM talk radio and portion of Fox News. If any right-wingers disagree, let them come forward and denounce Riehl and RedState for those deranged comments about Reid's wife.

If conservatives won't do that, then they have no argument to make.