The political equivalent of a mafia "contract" has been placed in Republican politicians, through efforts at all levels of the progressive political culture to "normalize" violence against President Trump and his enablers.  The horrific mass assassination attempt on the congressional delegation is never mentioned in the media, other than honors for Rep. Scalise (who almost died and needs a scooter) and the hero cops who prevented the intended mass slaughter.

And now we learn Senator Rand Paul was attacked by a rabid Trump-hater, and that neighbors deny that landscaping was the root of the attack, which was the first story put out by the national media by the suspect's lawyer, no doubt aware that the penalties for a political attack on a senator are severe.

At one end of the cultural spectrum, Antifa fascists and campus radicals preposterously argue that conservative speech is violence, while cultural grandees shoehorn a Trump assassination into Shakespeare in the Park at the other.  In between, Kathy Griffin retracts her apology for planting the image of a beheaded Trump in the minds of hordes of crazy people who have been told Trump is the same as Hitler.  The more violence is praised, and the more times the at-risk population is exposed to images of violence against Trump, the more people will be encouraged to act out.  We have largely closed our mental hospitals and have a lot of unstable people in a nation of 330 million.

Too many of us still live in a dream world, where really, really bad things can't happen to us because we're Americans.  One of the terrible things that can happen to us is assassinations determining the course of history.  Political historians call the 1930s in Japan "Government by Assassination," and it was the process by which a fascist dictatorship assumed total power.  If implemented on a sufficient scale, assassination can change the nature of a regime.

That's why I find this story from the Chicago Tribune deeply disturbing – because it involves a serious politician normalizing violence against the president.  Frank Skrbina writes:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel took a shot at the target – and President Donald Trump in the process – Thursday at the Blackhawks' new practice facility, which the team will begin using within the next couple of weeks.

Hockey stick in hand, Emanuel, under the watchful eye of former Blackhawk Daniel Carcillo, fired pucks inside the RapidShot training system at MB Ice Arena during a tour with the media and other Blackhawks dignitaries, including chairman Rocky Wirtz and president John McDonough.

Chicago Tribune.

Ask yourself what would happen to someone who shot hockey pucks at a likeness of Barack Obama when he was president.

Or maybe ask Jameson Hsieh, the rodeo clown who was banned for life from the Missouri State Fair for wearing an Obama mask.

Rahm Emanuel is an enabler now.