To paraphrase Michelle Obama, “When we go low, we whine about it and make excuses.”

After the media first denied that the left was an angry mob (being whipped up by the media), it tried to pretend that this was a cynical Republican strategy (to point out the obvious), followed by an equally inevitable admission and projection.

Why is the mob angry? Because Trump is ripping us apart with bigotry and hatred. – Greg Sargent, The Washington Post

We’re crazy… but it’s Trump’s fault.

President Donald Trump and Republicans have adopted a closing electoral strategy that depicts the Democratic Party and “angry” leftist protests against Trumpian rule as the only real reigning threat to our country’s civic fabric and the rule of law. A new Republican National Committee video juxtaposes footage of leading mainstream Democratic figures with that of angry protesters, while decrying “the left” as an “unhinged mob.”

As absurd as this conflation is on its face, it has smuggled itself into the mainstream debate, where it is getting a quasi-respectful hearing,

It’s absurd to show Rep. Maxine Waters urging harassment of Republicans, or Senator Hirono refusing to condemn harassment of Republicans?

But pivot to the ‘whataboutism’.

Trump, more than any leading U.S. figure in recent memory, has actively tried to stoke civil conflict on as many fronts as possible.

Unlike that moderate, Barack “Punish Your Enemies” Obama.

The New York Times reports Friday morning on the ways Democrats are straying from Michelle Obama’s credo: “When they go low, we go high.” The offending evidence? Eric Holder says: “When they go low, we kick them.” Avenatti counsels: “When they go low, I say hit back harder.” Hillary Clinton asserts: “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for.”…

Republicans, of course, have disingenuously seized on these remarks to claim Democrats are inciting violence. That’s nonsense. The meaning of these quotes is plain: They are a declaration that desperate times call for harder-edged procedural, political and electoral measures – an insistence that Democrats must forthrightly reckon with the true aims and nature of Republican countermajoritarian tactics,

Like the time Sarah Palin’s bullseye on a political map was interpreted by the media to mean that she was proposing murders.

But, when you do have Democrats sending death threats and trying to shoot congressional Republicans, language matters.

It treats the anger on the Democratic side as existing in a kind of vacuum, as if previous conduct by Trump and Republicans had no role in the current deterioration.

We’re horrible, but it’s Trump’s fault!

in a sense the “angry mob” strategy is itself sneeringly dismissive of the political values and aspirations of those millions.

Their aspiration to use mob violence to get their way?

Here it is necessary to say that, yes, some leftist protesters have gone too far. Yes, generally speaking, it’s bad to chase people out of restaurants, and it’s bad to menace people, and it’s bad to bust up property. Yes, there is a real distinction between legitimate if angry and raucous political dissent and true mob action. But as Brian Beutler on crooked.com says, Republicans are elevating isolated examples of the latter in bad faith – to distract from the true source of the illiberal and authoritarian forces that have been loosed upon the land.

Except nobody on the left really says it’s bad. Or makes any effort to stop it.

instead hatred of Trump is used to justify any and all abuses. As the Sargent piece sets out to do.