Trump shouldn't be blamed for any specific crime but it is apparently alright to blame him for a trend which doesn't exist

Truly astounding. This is from a Yale graduate and New York Times journalist. Biased, maybe, but surely not stupid.

But it is hard to see this opinion piece as anything but mindless mouthing of a catechism or rote recitation of ideological beliefs rather than a real argument. From It Isn’t Complicated: Trump Encourages Violence by David Leonhardt.

This wasn’t the first time Trump had mused about violence, of course. He has talked about “Second Amendment people” preventing the appointment of liberal judges. He’s encouraged police officers to bang suspects’ heads against car roofs. He has suggested his supporters “knock the hell” out of hecklers. At a rally shortly before 2018 Election Day, he went on a similar riff about Bikers for Trump and the military.

I’m well aware of the various see-no-evil attempts to excuse this behavior: That’s just how he talks. Don’t take him literally. Other Republicans are keeping him in check. His speeches and tweets don’t really matter.

But they do matter. The president’s continued encouragement of violence — and of white nationalism — is part of the reason that white-nationalist violence is increasing. Funny how that works.

Yes, we all know that the Mandarin Class are clutching their pearls over his rough language and abrasive manner. He's a New Yorker's New Yorker. What did you expect? Leonhardt is so outraged by Trump's uncouthness that he does something desperate - he reaches out to other Mandarin Class "experts" to see if they support his vaporish opinion.

After Trump’s latest threat, I reached out to several experts in democracy and authoritarianism to ask what they made of it. Their answers were consistent: No, the United States does not appear at risk of widespread political violence anytime soon. But Trump’s words are still corroding democracy and public safety.

His latest incitement fit a historical pattern, and one with “scary echoes,” as Daniel Ziblatt, who co-wrote the recent book “How Democracies Die,” told me. Trump combined lies about his political opponents — Democrats who need to be investigated (for made-up scandals) — with allusions to a patriotic, violent response by ordinary citizens. Latin American autocrats, including Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, have used this combination. So did European fascists in the 1930s.

The United States, thank goodness, does not have armed citizen militias carrying out regular attacks, as those other countries did. But our situation is still worrisome. “Violent talk can, at minimum, encourage lone-wolf violence,” Steven Levitsky, Ziblatt’s co-author and a Harvard political scientist, said. “It can also slowly normalize political violence, turning discourse and ideas that were once unsayable and even unthinkable into things that are sayable and thinkable.”

Hmm. If I am reading this correctly, the experts spoke as one "There is no violence and no risk of violence, but we still don't like how he talks." Did I get that right?

Leonhardt's position is that Trump's words will cause violence but the experts say that no they haven't caused any violence but its always possible it might in the future. Well that's not much evidence for Leonhardt's argument. Leonhardt, a True Believer, is not so easily discouraged.

These risks are not just hypothetical. In 2017, a House candidate body-slammed a reporter who asked a probing question — behavior with no recent precedent. Trump praised the now-congressman, Greg Gianforte, for the assault. In the Bright Light Watch survey of political scientists late last year, only 49 percent said the United States did not tolerate political violence, a notable decline from earlier levels. Some respondents cited Gianforte.

In a nation of 330 million, Leonhardt's evidence for rising white supremacism and political violence is a sole Republican candidate in Montana in 2016 who lost his temper with a British journalist, throwing him to the ground and beating him. The fact that he was subsequently elected by a clear 5% over his opponent suggests that the citizenry interpreted the incident somewhat differently than does Leonhardt.

It is a little surprising Leonhardt is struggling to come up with examples of political violence in the Trump presidency. I would have thought that the physical assault on Senator Rand Paul with grave injuries might have come to mind. Or perhaps that time when an assassin sought to take out the Republican House leadership at a baseball game? Seems hard to forget all the Antifa attacks.

Back to It Isn’t Complicated: Trump Encourages Violence. At least one thing is correct - it isn't complicated. If he is encouraging violence, then we should see evidence of increased violence, at least from the right. Is that what we see? No! Were Leonhardt to read his own paper, he would know that. From U.S. Murder Rate for 2018 Is on Track for a Big Drop by Jeff Asher.

Violence is declining rapidly under Trump. How can we rescue Leonhradt's argument? How about hate crimes? OK. Its getting hard to make his case for him.

Statistics on hate crimes are notoriously unreliable, but the evidence strongly suggests that they’re rising.

Yes, they are indeed notoriously unreliable. If, so, why rest your case on them? They are up marginally in absolute numbers but apparently because there are now more police departments reporting. Adjusted to compare like-for-like and it appears that they are down on a rate basis. Besides, at, from memory, some 7,000 hate crimes (most of which are property damage and spread across the board in terms of targets), these are negligible out of the 2 million crimes committed.

For something that isn't complicated, finding evidence to support Leonhradt's position is hard work.

How about

The Anti-Defamation League reports a 73 percent rise in “extremist-related killings” during the last four years.

Weeeeelllll. Unfortunately that won't work - When ideological narratives and data collide. ADL isn't measuring hate crimes, they are measuring crimes committed by people with prison tattoos.

Drawing a direct line from the purveyors of hateful rhetoric to any specific hate crime is usually impossible. And it’s usually a mistake to try. The motive for these crimes — be it in New Zealand last week or Pittsburgh last year — is typically a stew of mental illness, personal anger and mixed-up ideology. Trump doesn’t deserve to be blamed for any specific crime. But he does deserve blame for the trend.

Wait. We went from Trump encourages violence and its not complicated to:

Violence is falling not rising.

Most the political violence is coming from the left not the right.

Experts state that there is no evidence of rising political violence.

Even hate crimes seem vanishingly rare, mostly property and epithets, and most frequently committed by non-whites.

There is no direct connection between Trump and any known act of violence.

It is not a good idea to try and link the President's speech to any such acts.

Most acts of violence are typically a stew of mental illness, personal anger and mixed-up ideology

Trump doesn’t deserve to be blamed for any specific crime.

That's all the evidence and even his own argument and yet he arrives at:

But he does deserve blame for the trend.

But the trend is downwards. Perhaps when Leonhardt says "He does deserve blame for the trend" what he really means is that "He deserves praise for reducing violence." Perhaps, but I doubt it.

This is rank incoherence. The conclusion to his argument is exactly the social justice jacobin catechism with which he started.

It isn’t very complicated: The man with the world’s largest bully pulpit keeps encouraging violence and white nationalism. Lo and behold, white-nationalist violence is on the rise. You have to work pretty hard to persuade yourself that’s just a big coincidence.

Leonhardt has pretended to make an argument but actually he is waving his arms, misdirecting, obfuscating, and misleading in the hope that if he repeats his sacred text often enough, the rest of us will believe as he does - with a white hot intensity of the ideological Mandarin Class conviction.

A miserable mouse in the cognitive field of ideas.