Shootings and bombs in the US are just one symptom of the aggressive political discourse we are normalising

When the leader of the free world is a man who has asked baying hordes of his supporters to “knock the crap” out of protesters, has suggested that his opponents should perhaps be “roughed up”, and claims to be nostalgic for the good old days when his antagonists would be “carried out on a stretcher”, it is hardly surprising that in the wake of bombs being sent to President Manbaby’s opponents in the media and in politics, and just days after the sickening attack on the Jewish community of Pittsburgh, that people are drawing a straight line between Donald Trump’s choice of rhetoric and these appalling crimes.

And when the man charged with sending those bombs is found to have a “Donald Trump President 2016” bumper sticker on his truck, and the man charged with the murder of congregants of the Tree of Life Synagogue is found to have contributed to alt-right online vomitarium Gab, the instinct to lay responsibility for these atrocities at the door of the White House is almost impossible to resist.

But perhaps the harder truth to face, but that we must face, is that the president is not alone in adopting a way of speaking and perhaps even a way of thinking that is increasingly hard-edged, tribal, aggressive and potentially dangerous. In recent years we have seen judges lambasted as enemies of the people, the leader of the opposition branded as a soviet collaborator, and the widower of murdered MP Jo Cox pilloried as a sex pest.

More troubling still is the fact that such vitriol is no longer the preserve of the tabloid press. In recent months I have seen my father accused of voting for something that would “destroy his family” by supporting Brexit, working class people living outside London derided, en masse, as “provincial scum”, and Israel described as “much worse than the Nazis” – all on social media.

In another take on the “I’m not antisemitic, but…” motif, I still recall with a slight sense of nausea one comment I read after the Eurovision Song Contest that suggested we all pretend it was 1943, because at least that way Austria wouldn’t be voting for Israel.

How and why has it come to this, where people I know and have broken bread with now think that it is acceptable to spew out such venomous and idiotic soundbites to express themselves?

Perhaps compressing huge swathes of political discourse into 280 characters doesn’t help. Perhaps with every blog, vlog, comments section, tweet, retweet and post, that discourse gets noisier and noisier, to the point where the only way people feel that they are able to rise above the din is to say something that’s quick, loud and provocative, even to the point of being insidious. And perhaps as it becomes increasingly easy to construct our own safe space or echo chamber among like-minded strangers on the internet, our ability to manage the dialectical has withered away.

None of this is to deny that debate, and even heated argument, is an essential part of any healthy democratic system. Cliches about how increasingly divided our society is should be avoided. Progress only comes from division, and politics itself is division by definition. It is hopeless to try to build a bridge from the middle of the river. Nor is this an appeal to avoid language which offends, even deeply offends, the sensibilities of others.

Instead it is an entreaty to reinvigorate public debate by refusing to adopt the catchpenny, reactionary, bilious rhetoric of the likes of Donald Trump.

Opponents in debate are not (or at least, are not necessarily) scum. Antagonists needn’t be vile per se. And winning an argument is done by knowing more than your adversary or deploying what you do know with greater skill – not beating the crap out of your adversary, or speaking as though you would be happy to see others do so.