Trump threatens civil violence, Democrats just want everyone to be nice

In the several days since Nancy Pelosi's bizarre statement that as House Speaker she has no intention of pursuing impeachment against Trump no matter what. And, yes, that is a fair characterization of her statement. From her interview with Joe Heim, Nancy Pelosi on Impeaching Trump: ‘He’s Just Not Worth It’ Washinton Post 03/11/2019. I've posted twice about this here. But it's worth being clear about the arguments and the historical context:

We have a very serious challenge to the Constitution of the United States in the president’s unconstitutional assault on the Constitution, on the first branch of government, the legislative branch. … This is very serious for our country. Forgetting politics, forgetting partisanship, just talk about patriotism. So in terms of divisiveness, that we don’t see a commensurate - I don’t want to say reaction, just action - on the part of Republicans to the statements and actions the president is taking, yeah, this is probably the most divisive and serious [in Pelosi's 32 years as a Congressional Representative]. Serious, because again it’s about our fundamentals; it’s not about our politics. ...

In ’16, I never thought [Trump] would be elected president of the United States. How could it be? But then he was, so that made ’18 more crucial. And we won that. And thank God, because we now have a lever; we have leverage against this assault on the Constitution. This election is very important. I don’t think he’ll be reelected, but it is important for us to elect a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate and Democratic House. ...

He’s been a great organizer for Democrats, a great fundraiser for Democrats and a great mobilizer at the grass-roots level for Democrats. [Laughs.] And I think that’s good for America. ...

I’m not for impeachment. ... Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it. ...

... Our country is great. It’s a great country. Our founders gave us the strongest foundation. ... All the challenges we have faced, we can withstand anything. But maybe not two [Trump] terms. So we have to make sure that doesn’t happen. [my emphasis]

A few days later, Trump can out with this (quoted by Greg Sargent, Trump: You wouldn’t like my supporters in the military if they got angry Washington Post 03/14/2019:

You know, the left plays a tougher game, it’s very funny. I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher. Okay? I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump — I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad. But the left plays it cuter and tougher.

Juan Cole makes an important point in a post mainly focused on Islamophobia and the massacre this week of Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand ():

Some have called this random, one-off violence, which is almost impossible to forestall, “stochastic” terrorism. When an operation is the result of a fair-sized organization such as al-Qaeda or the Ku Klux Klan, the organization can be tracked and infiltrated and stopped. But some person somewhere or two or three of them, who seem a little off but do not trip any law enforcement wires, can plot out a massacre with relative ease. Mass shootings are not intrinsically difficult to pull off. Just going into a restaurant or church or mosque and shooting people down with automatic or semi-automatic weapons is like rolling out of bed for someone without a conscience or someone who is sick.

The good news is that the military defeat of the ISIL’s phony “caliphate” in eastern Syria and western and northern Iraq appears to have reduced the amount of stochastic terrorism associated with that group. Terrorists are victims of ego inflation, having been convinced by a recruiter and groomer that they are saving the world or saving large numbers of innocents by murdering other innocents. A defeated ISIL cannot inflate the ego any more, is not associated with any glorious victory or messianic expectation of victory.

The bad news is that Trump’s promotion of key themes of white supremacism, in conjunction with the billionaire Mercers and bizarre ideologues like Steve Bannon, have clearly produced a new wave of stochastic white nationalist terrorism. [my emphasis]

It's important to see how the two major parties are handling this, which is why I opened with the nnow-notorious Pelosi quote. Pelosi not just signaled but said publicly that she had no intention of using the single most important Constitutional tool Congress has to control a rogue President.

And a few days later Trump made this amazing threat of extralegal violence against the Democrats. And it's hard to imagine that Trump didn't take Pelosi's remarkable statement on impeachment as a sign of weakness and unwillingness to fight.

In effect, at this moment in history, impeachment is a Constitutional tool that the Democrats will not use. The Republicans will use it. This is a sad state of affairs, Particularly when Pelosi herself is saying, "We have a very serious challenge to the Constitution of the United States in the president’s unconstitutional assault on the Constitution ... Serious, because again it’s about our fundamentals."

After the Hundred Years of Darkness, people will look back on moments like this and shake their heads in astonishment.