Criminal Minds

“By the day after the attack, two things have happened: the victim has become target for jokes by opposition-party candidates and pundits—a former president’s son posts a picture of a hammer and a pair of men’s briefs and suggests it as a Halloween costume. An opposition party candidate in Arizona suggests that the political leader had insufficient security and her audience laughs and applauds. The second thing that happens—and it begins right away, in the hours after the attack, and snowballs with extraordinary rapidity—is that an entirely different narrative takes root and rapidly gains currency among the opposition party. What was a straightforward attack—an attempted mutilation of a well-known political figure—becomes the subject of a wild, wending theory that pulses with homophobia.” The attack on Paul Pelosi has been followed by an attack on the modicum of decency that used to accompany the world of politics. Tal Lavin On Lying About Violence. “In a political system that begets and rewards violence, Paul Pelosi’s fractured skull is not the first. It will not be the last.” It doesn’t just beget and reward violence, it laughs at it. Our political system is being turned into a Jackass movie.

+ “The officer in D.C. quickly pulled up additional camera angles from around Pelosi’s home and began to backtrack, watching recordings from the minutes before San Francisco police arrived. There, on camera, was a man with a hammer, breaking a glass panel and entering the speaker’s home, according to three people familiar with how Capitol Police learned of the break-in and who have been briefed on or viewed the video themselves.” Capitol Police cameras caught break-in at Pelosi home, but no one was watching.