
It was also wildly inappropriate. If just about any other person in the US tweeted out a bizarro fantasy cartoon of them attacking and killing a coworker, they would definitely have a big HR problem on their hands, likely face termination from their jobs and possibly be getting a visit from the cops.
If a high school student tweeted out a similar video targeting the student body president and the coolest girl in school, you can bet school administrators would immediately treat him as a potential violent threat (and if his video was as thoroughly embarrassing as the one Gosar shared, he’d also face widespread mockery from his peers).
But since the person who tweeted the video wasn’t an average employee or a high schooler and is instead a Republican member of Congress, apparently he will face no consequences.
And Gosar’s video isn’t just a threat to Biden and Ocasio-Cortez. It’s a threat against American democracy and the stability of the nation.
It’s one thing to virulently disagree over values and policy, as Republicans and Democrats long have. It’s another to position the opposition party as an enemy so hostile that the threat of physical violence up to and including the point of murder is funny. That’s a world where the answer to political disagreement isn’t elections, or reliance on long-standing democratic institutions — but rather where something more sinister can seem justified.
To add absurdity to injury, the Republican Party has made an art — showcased most recently in elections in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere — of accusing Democrats of extremism. But while Republicans are blaming Democrats for school administrators — some of whom can be ham-handed or overzealous in how they teach America’s long history of racism — members of their own party are promoting racist conspiracy theories and tweeting out videos of them appearing to kill a colleague.
The Republican Party has a serious problem with extremism. Instead of cleaning house, they’re doubling down in defense — finger-pointing at Democrats, refusing to take any responsibility for their actions, and frothing up the most dangerous fringes of their base. This is apparently what they think is the easiest route to power.
It’s also a fast route to division, violence and the dissolution of a democratic society.