Mike Pence Suddenly Doesn't Know How Culture Works When It Comes to Donald Trump's Campaign of Stochastic Terrorism

Conservatives are hypocrites about a whole lot of things, but one of the most infuriating and cynical iterations of their rank hypocrisy is how the ultimate culture warriors who have spent decades exploiting social bigotries to defend and entrench their privilege suddenly pretend they don't know how the fuck culture works when it comes to being accountable for the inevitable violence that results from their othering, scapegoating, and eliminationist rhetoric.

In a perfect and terrible example of this gross dynamic, here is our profoundly mendacious Vice-President Mike Pence defending his boss' obscene campaign of stochastic terrorism, which is underwriting acts of public violence against marginalized people and vocal critics of the regime:

"We condemn political violence in the strongest possible terms. It will not be allowed. It will not be tolerated," he said. "We saw that last summer with the attack on the Republican baseball practice, of course, we saw the suspect mailing pipe bombs to prominent political figures this week, [and] the horrific and anti-Semitic attack that took place in Pittsburgh grieves our hearts. We need to continue to work as a nation to bring these senseless acts of violence to an end, and we will."

"But," he added, "I think we need to be very careful…about associating acts of violence with strong political debate in America. Throughout our history, we've always had strong political debate, and then we settle those things at the ballot box. I think what the president is determined to do is continue in the days that remain in this election and going forward to make sure that we preserve the freedom of speech, and the ability of Americans to have those debates, to work out our issues in the public domain, and then carry that into the ballot box and resolve our differences there."

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck youuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.

There is a meaningful, significant difference between "strong political debate" and incendiary rhetoric designed to dehumanize entire classes of people on their basis of their (our) identities and to put targets on the backs of one's political opponents.

And the distinction is not at all difficult to make.

Pence is deliberately refusing to make it, because he is a piece of a shit and malice is the agenda.