After years of sowing the wind, did we just reap the whirlwind?

Did the coarseness and violence of political discourse in this country plant the seeds of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump last week?

“Unacceptable rhetoric makes unacceptable behavior acceptable — and for the dangerous, deranged among us, violence inevitable.”

So said former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Charles Johnson in a bracing discussion on Wednesday with former Defense Secretary Mark Esper at the Aspen Security Forum.

Esper worked for a Republican president, Johnson for a Democrat, but both men agreed mightily that that the threshold between violent rhetoric and violent action was breached last week, and every time it is crossed, the crossing gets easier.

“So now you have the blame game … people pointing fingers: Is it local or state, is it federal, who did this, who did that? Each side has conspiracy theories,” said Esper. Such comments feed the “bigger beast” of harsh political discourse, making it grow worse, he said.

Colorado politicians were among the worst offenders.

One state Democrat, Rep. Steven Woodrow of Denver, was condemned by party leaders for a post he wrote on X that read: “The last thing America needed was sympathy for the devil but here we are.”

Right after the assassination attempt, U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert told 9News’ Kyle Clark, “I do believe that Joe Biden is responsible for the shooting.”

State Rep. Scott Bottoms said he believed the FBI had a hand in the attempted assassination.

Esper and Johnson said these kind of comments are exactly what we don’t need right now. More hate cannot drive out hate.

“I think we need to settle things down,” said Esper, a Republican. “And that first responsibility lies with political leaders on both ends of the spectrum — elected, non-elected you name it — is to calm things down.”

“The political discourse right now is terrible,” added Johnson. Heated rhetoric has repeatedly set the stage for violence in recent years, he said. “That’s what happened on Saturday. That’s what happened to Nancy Pelosi’s husband. That’s what almost happened to Brett Kavanaugh and numerous other high-profile individuals.” A far-right conspiracy theorist attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer in 2022, and a man upset about the possible overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022 turned up at Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh’s house with the intent of assassinating him.

The Capitol Police investigated 8,008 cases of threats involving members of Congress last year.

It’s encouraging to see Republicans now arguing for something to be done about the violent rhetoric.

Over two dozen Texas lawmakers are calling for the House Oversight Committee to look into “political rhetoric” in their investigation into the assassination.

“While we are blessed to live in a country where we have a constitutional right to free speech, this constant flammable rhetoric has a tangible detrimental impact on our country,” the letter from the lawmakers read.

But its disingenuous not to recognize how much of the toxic atmosphere has been stirred by Trump himself.

“The same people who are deflecting and projecting are the same people who have been fanning the flame of extremism,” said one Republican election official in Arizona, who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “They project that message to their followers — without any, any, any recognition that their guy has really been the worst actor in all of this.”

Let’s not forget that five people died in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot that Trump was impeached for inciting.

The former president has a long history of encouraging violence. He has urged supporters to beat up protesters at rallies, cheered a Republican congressman for body-slamming a reporter, called for looters and shoplifters to be shot, and made light of the hammer attack on Pelosi’s husband. When some of his supporters chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” on Jan. 6, Trump told aides that maybe the vice president deserved it because he had defied efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Both sides have stirred up so much hatred that it’s floating out there like a toxic airborne event now, and it doesn’t care who it attacks.

And sometimes the silence about violence is louder than the rhetoric. Trump’s failure to condemn the violence at the Capitol in real time acted like kerosene for those rioters.

By the same token, Democratic leaders’ nearly universal demonizing of Trump and their refusal to stop and condemn the excesses of Black Lives Matters protests that turned violent, or the declaring of “autonomous protest zones” in cities like Portland and Seattle free of police intervention, only encouraged more violence, as well. Failing to punish bad action has the same result as cheering it on.

For a moment, I thought maybe the horror of last Saturday’s assassination attempt might finally galvanize a bipartisan commitment by politicians to tone down our inflammatory rhetoric, to acknowledge once and for all that hatred is paralyzing us, that more darkness cannot get us out of our present darkness.

At the Republican National Convention, Trump made an effort early on in his acceptance speech to make a plea for just such forward progress.

“The discord and division in our society must be healed — we must heal it quickly,” Trump said. “As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together— or we fall apart.”

But by the end of the speech he was back to his old divisiveness, referring to “crazy Nancy Pelosi,” blasting Biden by name, called for the firing of the head of the United Auto Workers, and attacking one Democratic senator as a “total lightweight.”

He missed an opportunity to broaden his appeal, to turn this tragedy into something more profound.

The moment called for something greater, something like the eloquence the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy brought to the violent days of the 1960s.

“Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it,” King once said. “Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.”

And then on the day after King was assassinated in April 1968, Robert F. Kennedy said this:

“We seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: Violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove the sickness from our soul.”

After years of sowing the wind, did we just reap the whirlwind?

Did the coarseness and violence of political discourse in this country plant the seeds of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump last week?

“Unacceptable rhetoric makes unacceptable behavior acceptable — and for the dangerous, deranged among us, violence inevitable.”

So said former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Charles Johnson in a bracing discussion on Wednesday with former Defense Secretary Mark Esper at the Aspen Security Forum.

Esper worked for a Republican president, Johnson for a Democrat, but both men agreed mightily that that the threshold between violent rhetoric and violent action was breached last week, and every time it is crossed, the crossing gets easier.

“So now you have the blame game … people pointing fingers: Is it local or state, is it federal, who did this, who did that? Each side has conspiracy theories,” said Esper. Such comments feed the “bigger beast” of harsh political discourse, making it grow worse, he said.

Colorado politicians were among the worst offenders.

One state Democrat, Rep. Steven Woodrow of Denver, was condemned by party leaders for a post he wrote on X that read: “The last thing America needed was sympathy for the devil but here we are.”

Right after the assassination attempt, U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert told 9News’ Kyle Clark, “I do believe that Joe Biden is responsible for the shooting.”

State Rep. Scott Bottoms said he believed the FBI had a hand in the attempted assassination.

Esper and Johnson said these kind of comments are exactly what we don’t need right now. More hate cannot drive out hate.

“I think we need to settle things down,” said Esper, a Republican. “And that first responsibility lies with political leaders on both ends of the spectrum — elected, non-elected you name it — is to calm things down.”

“The political discourse right now is terrible,” added Johnson. Heated rhetoric has repeatedly set the stage for violence in recent years, he said. “That’s what happened on Saturday. That’s what happened to Nancy Pelosi’s husband. That’s what almost happened to Brett Kavanaugh and numerous other high-profile individuals.” A far-right conspiracy theorist attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer in 2022, and a man upset about the possible overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022 turned up at Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh’s house with the intent of assassinating him.

The Capitol Police investigated 8,008 cases of threats involving members of Congress last year.

It’s encouraging to see Republicans now arguing for something to be done about the violent rhetoric.

Over two dozen Texas lawmakers are calling for the House Oversight Committee to look into “political rhetoric” in their investigation into the assassination.

“While we are blessed to live in a country where we have a constitutional right to free speech, this constant flammable rhetoric has a tangible detrimental impact on our country,” the letter from the lawmakers read.

But its disingenuous not to recognize how much of the toxic atmosphere has been stirred by Trump himself.

“The same people who are deflecting and projecting are the same people who have been fanning the flame of extremism,” said one Republican election official in Arizona, who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “They project that message to their followers — without any, any, any recognition that their guy has really been the worst actor in all of this.”

Let’s not forget that five people died in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot that Trump was impeached for inciting.

The former president has a long history of encouraging violence. He has urged supporters to beat up protesters at rallies, cheered a Republican congressman for body-slamming a reporter, called for looters and shoplifters to be shot, and made light of the hammer attack on Pelosi’s husband. When some of his supporters chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” on Jan. 6, Trump told aides that maybe the vice president deserved it because he had defied efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Both sides have stirred up so much hatred that it’s floating out there like a toxic airborne event now, and it doesn’t care who it attacks.

And sometimes the silence about violence is louder than the rhetoric. Trump’s failure to condemn the violence at the Capitol in real time acted like kerosene for those rioters.

By the same token, Democratic leaders’ nearly universal demonizing of Trump and their refusal to stop and condemn the excesses of Black Lives Matters protests that turned violent, or the declaring of “autonomous protest zones” in cities like Portland and Seattle free of police intervention, only encouraged more violence, as well. Failing to punish bad action has the same result as cheering it on.

For a moment, I thought maybe the horror of last Saturday’s assassination attempt might finally galvanize a bipartisan commitment by politicians to tone down our inflammatory rhetoric, to acknowledge once and for all that hatred is paralyzing us, that more darkness cannot get us out of our present darkness.

At the Republican National Convention, Trump made an effort early on in his acceptance speech to make a plea for just such forward progress.

“The discord and division in our society must be healed — we must heal it quickly,” Trump said. “As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together— or we fall apart.”

But by the end of the speech he was back to his old divisiveness, referring to “crazy Nancy Pelosi,” blasting Biden by name, called for the firing of the head of the United Auto Workers, and attacking one Democratic senator as a “total lightweight.”

He missed an opportunity to broaden his appeal, to turn this tragedy into something more profound.

The moment called for something greater, something like the eloquence the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy brought to the violent days of the 1960s.

“Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it,” King once said. “Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.”

And then on the day after King was assassinated in April 1968, Robert F. Kennedy said this:

“We seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: Violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove the sickness from our soul.”