You’ve probably read all these news events in the past week, but for me–devoted as I am to time lines because they reveal patterns in reality–Harper’s Weekly Review summarizes this week’s facts of life perfectly:
A Democrat in Iowa withdrew from a race for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives because she had received death threats, and a Republican state representative in Texas threatened to shoot his Democratic colleague. A G.O.P. county chair in Oregon recommended that Republicans employ private militias, and a former Trump campaign official was sentenced to seven years in prison for organizing an armed militia to aid in a standoff against the U.S. government. A conservative radio host called for “a more violent Christianity,” a noose was found at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, a white man in California shouted racial slurs at a black man and then attacked him with a machete, a white man shouting racial slurs ran over two members of the Quinalt tribe with a monster truck, and a white man riding a Portland train drank sangria while shouting racist slurs at a woman wearing hijab, then stabbed to death two people who attempted to intervene. “I’m sorry the world is so cruel,” said a bystander to one of the dying men.