Today’s Forecast
Has the Left Been Triggered?
By Jason Daniel
If you’ve been following politics in recent years, or have access to the internet, you may have heard the phrase ‘triggering liberals’. Triggering liberals has become a popular pastime of right wing trolls and personalities. For the most part, they just spout off offensive words and phrases, from what seems like pre–compiled, weekly troll talking-points, then proceed to label people snowflakes. Seems silly, but it’s amazingly popular, and maybe even effective.
Last week a man named James Hodgkinson opened fire on a group of Republican lawmakers in Alexandria, VA, putting House GOP Whip Steve Scalise, in critical condition. Hodgkinson was killed by Capitol Police on the scene, but not before injuring Scalise and several others. James Hodgkinson was a Democrat, and had volunteered on Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. His Facebook was riddled with anti-Trump rants and posts, his disdain for the president and his cohorts was apparent. Did I mention he had a Republican filled hit-list? Nuts.
Almost immediately, Republican personalities and trolls alike, started hammering liberals as violent anarchist who hate America. Clearly a gross exaggeration, but the idea is still finding a home. Mark Pitcavage , a fellow at the Anti-Defamation League, said this in a recent NPR article “In the past 10 years when you look at murders committed by domestic extremists in the United States of all types, right-wing extremists are responsible for about 74 percent of those murders.” So, if this is the case, what justifies this new talking point the right has been hitting so hard since this terrible shooting? Nothing, really, and therein lies the problem. Narratives are changing and evolving incredibly fast in the information age, and nobody really seems too keen on challenging them. Both Democrats and Republicans are extremely dug in, and the facts are suffering.
With this murderous leftist narrative finding a home in the minds of Republicans, how long until the right pro-actively defends itself? This would undoubtedly prompt the left to do the same, and before we know it, America is a war-zone. Of course, I’m speculating to the extreme, but there needs to be foresight. We can’t continue to unconsciously allow ourselves to be divided, without examining the potential repercussions of allowing division to persist.
The Social Climate 