(Jon Margolis writes political columns for VTDigger.)

[B]ernie Sanders did not shoot anybody Wednesday.

Or ever.

But James Hodgkinson, who allegedly shot five people including Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, seems to have been a big Bernie Sanders fan who supported his presidential campaign last year.

So though Sanders pronounced himself “sickened by this despicable act” and said “violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society,” Vermont’s senator found himself — reluctantly and perhaps unfairly — entangled in the blame game that followed the shooting.

At least in the first hours after the shooting in Alexandria, Virginia, Republicans and conservatives were not even suggesting that Sanders bore any personal responsibility. Instead, they blamed a somewhat amorphous “left,” where former House Speaker Newt Gingrich found “an increasing intensity of hostility” toward President Donald Trump and Republicans in general.

That’s true, and the fact that it is no truer than the “intensity of hostility” Republicans visited (and still do) on President Barack Obama and his party does not prove that the intensity can’t have dire consequences.

Liberals, after all, can’t have it both ways. For the last five months, some on the left have blamed violent incidents on Trump, accusing him of setting a tone that encourages or at least condones violence. If that’s the case, then what Republican Rep. Chris Collins, of New York, called “the tone and the angst and the anger directed at Donald Trump” could, as Collins said, “fuel the fires.”

Research by sociologist Nathan Kalmoe, now of Louisiana State University, found that even “mild violent metaphors multiply support for political violence among aggressive citizens.”

Hodgkinson, who reportedly belonged to a Facebook group called “Terminate the Republican Party,” would seem to have been an aggressive citizen.

That doesn’t mean Sanders inspired his shooting spree. One real difference between Sanders (or any prominent Democrat) and the president is that Trump has on occasion personally encouraged violence. At one campaign rally he urged supporters to “knock the crap” out of protesters, promising to “pay the legal fees.” On another occasion he said he’d like to “punch (a protester) in the face.”

Sanders has never said anything remotely comparable. His speeches and statements can be criticized for being bad policy, simplistic, unrealistic, even downright silly. But it is all but impossible to find a single sentence that could be interpreted as encouraging even the most aggressive citizen to pick up a gun and start shooting people.

Conservatives who complain about the “intense hostility” coming from the left may have a point. Sometimes, that hostility has ended in violence. Self-styled “anti-fascists” have disrupted Trump rallies and have rioted in Berkeley, California, and in Middlebury to prevent conservative speakers from appearing on campus.

But those black-clad rioters have not been invited to Democratic Party gatherings or offices. Right-wing extremists such as Alex Jones — who recently said he would “support the president right now moving against these people physically,” referring to liberals — gets to talk to the president.

Besides, the “left” that outrages conservatives rarely if ever includes elected Democrats. The examples conservatives cited in the aftermath of Wednesday’s shootings were of comedian Kathy Griffin holding up that model of Trump’s severed head and a current New York production of “Julius Caesar” in which Caesar wears a big red tie and has a wife with an Eastern European accent.

But Griffin and Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis are not in politics. Their own views may be left of center, but the political “left” – whether politicians such as Sanders and Nancy Pelosi, columnists like Paul Krugman or activist academics like Brad DeLong — is not responsible for every (or any) tasteless showbiz move.

And where was the Republican anger at the 2012 “Julius Caesar” production at Minneapolis’ prestigious Guthrie Theater in which the assassinated Caesar was obviously patterned after Obama? Or in 2015 when the movie “Kingsman: The Secret Service” showed the assassination of an unnamed president who was obviously Obama?

Maybe back in 2012 conservatives were still literate and remembered that “Julius Caesar” is not pro-assassination; the assassins lose in the end. Maybe back then they even knew that the only thing to say about a play one has not seen is … nothing. Minimal intellectual honesty (and, yes, Republicans used to have some) requires silence about a play, painting, statue or movie unseen, or a book not read. None of the Republicans screeching about this production, including Donald Trump Jr., claim to have seen it.

The more interesting question is why Democrats didn’t complain about the Guthrie “Caesar” or the “Kingsman” movie. It would be nice to suppose that Democrats were (and possibly remain) literate, and even that they believe in freedom of expression and the primacy of art.

But maybe they were just asleep at the switch.
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