WHAT IF EVERYTHING THE rIGHT DREAMT OF CAME TO PASS...:

It was at that moment, in the predawn blackness of a hot August night, that you could see that the center of Donald Trump's America is not holding. You had already watched the fear and loathing spiraling out of control -- the immigrants afraid to leave their homes to take their kids out to a playground or an ice cream shop, the gulag of squalid concentration camps, the increasingly racist rants from a president desperate to cling to his job. And now these twin eruptions -- body bags and hastily abandoned shoes stacked up on blood-stained American asphalt.

When things fall apart, they shatter into a million pieces. I can't tell you yet exactly how the bloodshed in El Paso is related to a mass murder in Dayton, or to the social dysfunction right here in Philadelphia that caused someone to spray bullets into a crowd of people shooting a hip-hop video, or into a crowded block party in Brooklyn the night before that. I can't explain why people tweeting about El Paso couldn't use the hashtag #WalmartShooting because it was already in use for a man who'd just murdered two employees at an outlet in Mississippi.

All I know is that it's all starting to feel like the same event -- a Great Unraveling of America. The feeling only grew worse when I read that the authorities in El Paso believe some of the wounded may not go to local hospitals ... because they're so afraid of our immigration cops. It seemed like one more sign that conditions in this country -- the violence, the fear, the embrace of racism and xenophobia from the highest levels, and the long slide into neo-fascism -- have become intolerable. And yet -- with the blood of El Paso and Dayton not yet dry -- far too many are still tolerating this.

None more so than America's so-called Republican leaders -- the Mitch McConnells, Mitt Romneys, the Greg Abbotts -- who seemed to share the same pathetic and cowardly playbook of quickly taking to Twitter, praying for the victims and their families, praising the first responders, and quickly logging off without one word about the scourge of white supremacy, their president who helps promote it, or the gun culture that makes it all so lethal.

The few GOP bigwigs who were pressed for more fell back on familiar tropes. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy reached all the way to back to the 1990s to blame violent video games, while Abbott, the governor of Texas who once famously lamented the fact that Texans weren't buying as many guns as Californians, said "the bottom line is that mental health is a large contributor."

No doubt, mental health -- and the lack of care -- is a crisis in this country. But linking it to the El Paso murders seems like an evasion. From what we know so far, the killer embraced a sick ideology but knew exactly what he was doing -- driving 600 miles to a carefully selected kill zone and writing a hate-filled but consistent manifesto. His mass murder seemed less a statement about his own mental health and more a statement about the moral health of a nation where so many are opening embracing racist and xenophobic rhetoric. Including the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Trump has, at times, seemed to welcome violence toward immigrants. At a May rally in Florida, Trump bemoaned legal protections for migrants and asked rhetorically, "How do you stop these people?"

"Shoot them!" cried one audience member.

Trump chuckled." https://t.co/l1gpg1ky0B

— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) August 4, 2019

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