Is America descending into political violence again? I asked 12 experts.

James T. Hodgkinson, a 66-year-old man from Illinois, walked onto a baseball diamond Wednesday in Northern Virginia and shot House Majority Whip Steve Scalise. Four others, including a congressional staffer, a lobbyist, and two members of the Capitol Police, were also wounded in the attack.

Six years ago, Jared Lee Loughner, a 22-year-old man from Arizona, opened fire outside a grocery store, seriously injuring Democratic Congress member Gabrielle Giffords and killing six others.

Since then we’ve witnessed a host of terror attacks and mass shootings — in San Bernardino, in Colorado Springs, in Charleston, in Chattanooga, in Santa Barbara, in Fort Hood, in Santa Monica, in Newtown, in Minneapolis, in Aurora, and in Oakland.

The motives in each of these attacks vary, but they’re all united by the thread of violence.

This is not America circa 1968, much less America during the Civil War. Things can be — and have been — much worse. But we are never far removed from chaos and violence.....

Good analysis. I'm not going to fault the writer for asking a question that we all may have to ask some day soon or for asking people who seem to him to be experts.

There was a lot one could take objection to in the responses, but also some food for thought. What is at first glance crudely provocative may also provoke thought if you let it. In any case, the question is more important than the responses.

I'd agree that these shooters have mostly been lone nuts, but people are going to be asking more and more what this is all leading up to. If there are enough incidents people start to see a pattern and a progression in what's happening.

Does more polarization cause more political violence? The connection is something that should be considered. If you don't accept defeat, and if you are convinced that your opponents are illegitimate, it could make you violent -- and nowadays people are much less likely to admit that the other side may have won fair and square.

Besides legitimacy, conventionality is a factor. Partisans hate presidents of the other party. But if the president seems to fit into the usual pattern that hatred is less than if the president appears unconventional and unpredictable.

Also, I think all the [Islamicist] terror acts shown on television probably prepare us subliminally for homegrown political violence as the "new normal." When every week brings a new outrage, eventually the unthinkable becomes possible and real.

>>What were Loughner’s politics?

>incoherent and all over the map

Agreed. When somebody is really crazy you can connect the dots in different ways, but the details don't add up to a consistent picture of any political ideology.

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