This has been coming for a long time. I can’t sweep the last two years under the rug and pretend that Rep. Gabriele Giffords’ (D-AZ) shooting at a constituent meeting yesterday was simply the product of random violence or mental illness. I know that after tragedies like this, it’s customary for us to come together and talk about how “we’re all Americans,” and the like. But I can’t do it.

This is what happens when we have an organized political movement that brands our elected representatives as socialists, traitors, enemies of the people, and not “real Americans.” It’s what happens when we put politicians literally in crosshairs, or when candidates threaten that the voters will opt for “2nd amendment remedies.”

I blame the leaders of the Tea Party movement, whose tactics from the very beginning have relied on anger, fear, and intimidation. I blame those who have denigrated the public service of our elected leaders. I blame those who peddle a perverse nationalism in which only those who adhere to a certain set of beliefs, wrongly couched in fake Constitutional language, are considered “real Americans.”

I know that many of the ordinary citizens who really believe in the Tea Party movement aren’t violent people. I know the vast majority are just trying to act in the public good. But the leaders of the Tea Party movement — its profiteers, really — have no interest in the public good. They have whipped the nation into a violent frenzy, even as they themselves have neatly ridden atop the mob to political power and personal profit.

I’m sure a lot of people are going to be angry that I’ve written this. They’ll say it’s insensitive. They’ll say it turns a national tragedy into a political attack. Well, I don’t care anymore. I see a group of people out there who are actively ripping apart the foundations our country was built on. I won’t pretend it’s not happening, and I can’t control my anger and what’s being done to our country anymore.

[Photo: a Sarah Palin fundraiser, via Firedoglake]