The week just ended will go down in history and in the annals of failed good intentions. It was the moment when the Resistance — the self-declared defenders of the good, true, and holy against the assaults of the Trump interregnum — became in some ways still more unhinged than the regime they were protesting.

“This is a president who seems to want these things to happen,” said Mika Brzezinski of the Morning Joe program, days after the sickening bloodshed in El Paso, Texas. She was suggesting not only that the president relishes the sight of his own people dying, but that his backers are equally bloodthirsty and vile.