Richard Larsen could have (and should have) concluded his July 2 “liberal terrorism” article by saying that Donald Trump is largely responsible for establishing our current sad political and social atmosphere with his hateful rhetoric and actions. After all who ANNOUNCES his presidential candidacy by calling Mexicans rapists and criminals? Trump has said and done scores of things any ONE of which would have sunk the political careers of previous politicians. And yet he started off his campaign in this manner!?! Who issues a steady stream of misogynist statements and “tweets”? Who bullied his way through the Republican primaries calling his fellow Republican candidates juvenile names — Lying Ted, Little Marco, Low Energy Jeb and of course calling his Democratic opponents Crooked Hillary and Crazy Bernie? Larson should pry himself away from his right-wing focused news feeds and search results. (That is all he and his ilk digests; he lives and breathes this stuff and then writes articles to the ISJ to promote hate and discontent.) If he did I’m positive that he could find four to five times the examples of “conservative terrorism” and outright hate crimes perpetrated by the right.

The Republicans are primarily responsible for the degradation of our political discourse. It primarily started with the relentless prosecution of Bill Clinton's non-scandals (Whitewater, Travelgate, Vince Foster death,etc.) and culminated in the Republicans in Congress meeting to vow not to cooperate with Obama on ANYTHING even before his first inauguration — an act which I would call basically treasonous. The rise of right-wing hate radio (Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Savage, our own Neil Larson) perpetuates this problem. And articles by the Larse(o)n twins in the ISJ do not help at all.

A final note: in the spring of 2016 Richard Larson wrote a series of anti-Trump articles (3/4/16, 3/12/16, 3/25/16, 4/16/16...) as well he should being a "true conservative." However, once this lunatic was elected president, Larsen changed his tune to become a major Trump supporter. Ah, party over country!

Cliff Olsen,

Pocatello