I've been thinking about the Timothy McVeigh attack on OKC, and how that really laid the groundwork for what happened Wednesday. Especially in light of reports showing that the insurrectionists fully intended a McVeigh-style level of violence.

In the aftermath, Bill Clinton barely alluded to what should have been obvious — that an increasingly vitriolic Republican Party and their propaganda machine (which was mostly AM radio figures like Limbaugh) had sown the seeds and McVeigh grew from the soil.

The right pulled a trick that has, since then, become common — in no small part because it works. There was this outsized outrage — they were WAY more outraged at Clinton's words than at the mass murder of children.

And so Democrats retreated. Everyone abandoned the project of holding responsible those who had sown poison for so long — including Reagan — by characterizing all federal employees as evil leeches, winking at white supremacists, and valorizing guns.

And so the situation continued to fester, until, 21 years later, Trump was elected president, campaigning on the same ideology that led McVeigh to blow up the OKC federal building — white supremacy, conspiracy theories, treating normal government functions like a "deep state".

We didn't stand up to it then, and look what happened. If we don't stand up to it now, it will get worse. History shows it. Our current moment shows it. McVeigh used to be a fringe. Now his views are the majority of the GOP. We are in a crisis and inaction is not acceptable.