Daily Verse | Leviticus 2:13
Season all your grain offerings with salt. Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings;
add salt to all your offerings.

Thursday. Due to the recent change in administrations, dirty deeds can no longer be done dirt cheap.

I’ve been predicting a new American Civil War for a number of years now, based on the trajectory of our ideological splintering and the increasingly hostile discourse across the political spectrum. For instance, who would have thought that there would come a day in the United States when a former CIA officer would advocate treating “domestic extremists” as insurgents?

I think it’s a national security imperative precisely because [Trump] is seen as the charismatic leader of a great many violent people. And I think that that needs to be countered. So long as he is there and leading the resistance, if you will, which he shows every sign of intending to do, he is going to be an inspiration to very violent people.

Was that on your bingo card for 2021?

It’s amazing that we can have a confirmed Bernie Bro in James T. Hodgkinson, who shot at congressional Republicans at a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, nearly killing Steve Scalise; we can have violent riots across the U.S. by BLM-tifa, causing $9 billion in damages and urged on by none other than a vice-presidential candidate and the Speaker of the House; we can tolerate a mob occupying a Senate office building and pounding on the doors of the Supreme Court to protest Brett Kavanaugh. and bragging they had shut down the Capitol; and we can have several sitting members of Congress literally calling for violence—but when a hundred people dressed in MAGA gear breach the Capitol—with some of the leaders proven to be progressive activists, not Trump supporters—it’s like a reenactment of 9/11 to the progressive Left.

It’s very important that people see that he has lost, is a private citizen. But I think it’s extremely important that his potency as a symbol for the most violent among us is somehow addressed.

Here are some clarifying questions for Robert Grenier, the former CIA official who is painting 75 million Trump supporters as the equivalent of Afghani insurgents.

• Define “insurgent.”
• Define “domestic extremists.”
• Define “violence.” Are words “violence”? Is silence “violence”?
• If Donald J. Trump is “an inspiration to very violent people,” who, specifically, are those “very violent” people? How do you know? How many are there?
• If they’re “very violent” then you have evidence of their Very Violent Violence, yes? You’re not just speculating?

And the thrust of our campaign there was, yes, to hunt down al-Qaida, but primarily to remove the supportive environment in which they were able to live and to flourish. And that meant fighting the Taliban. And I think that is the heart of what we need to deal with here. Hunting down people who are criminals, that is something that which U.S. law enforcement is very well capable of doing and doing while preserving fundamental civil rights. That’s in some ways the easiest part of the problem. The difficult part of the problem is affecting the environment within which violent elements otherwise would be able to thrive.

More clarification, please:

• In the context of Donald J. Trump, define “criminals.”
• Define “supportive environment.”
• How many rings outward from the Very Violent People do you need to “remove” so that there is no longer a “supportive environment” in which they can thrive?
• How will you “remove” those rings of support?

Good thing we got rid of Literally Hitler^™ so that we could make room for these totally American Constitutionalists who don’t at all threaten to hunt down half the voters in the country because they consider them American Taliban.

Tell me again why we set another record in January for number of FBI background checks on gun purchases?

Joe Biden is bringing the country together like never before—except we’re being made to closely face each other across a chasm that can’t be closed. One side has the force of government behind them. The other has their right to bear arms.

Keep your powder dry, my friends.

[Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash]