Well, nobody is surprised about this

The level of violence at Donald Trump's rallies is getting ridiculous.

Somehow, his angry, racist, violent rhetoric is bringing out aggressive behavior in his followers.

Who knew?



This video was put together a week ago, and since then Trump has canceled a rally in Chicago, allegedly due to protesters, although the Chicago P.D. has stated that the situation was completely under control and the only reason the rally was canceled was due to Trump's paranoia.

There was also a disruption at yesterday's Ohio rally, where a man rushed the stage but was quickly subdued and arrested before reaching Trump.

Trump immediately branded the attacker as a follower of Bernie Sanders.

Which raises immediate questions in my mind. Why blame it on Sanders? I mean, obviously Hillary Clinton has a significant lead in both voted delegates and potential super-delegate votes at the convention (don't get me started on super delegates please). So why would he feel the need to put the blame on the trailing candidate?

My guess is that Trump sees Sanders as the bigger threat. National polls show that if the general election was held today, Sanders wins by a larger margin than Clinton. Also, recent wins by Sanders show that even though he is trailing, there are many contests still to be held in northern states where Sanders is polling ahead of Clinton.

Trump may believe that Sanders is going to win the nomination, so he's more inclined to try to tack any blame on Bernie Sanders.

I'm wondering if Trump's secretive brain trust is going to capitalize on this and try to take this sort of thing to a higher level. At the risk of being labeled a "Godwin'er", there is an image in my mind of the 1933 Reichstag fire, which occurred roughly four weeks after Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany. The fire was purportedly set by German Communists. Hitler used the event as an excuse to solidify his power and gain sympathy from the majority of the German people who may have been ambivalent about him.

And to arrest and execute Communists, and basically anyone else who opposed him.

Since then, many historians have theorized that Adolf's crew probably staged the fire to achieve those goals.

While Donald Trump does not have that level of power yet, the concept of a false flag operation may benefit the Trump campaign. Especially when Trump himself has offered publicly to pay the legal fees of anyone who is arrested for assaulting any protesters at his events. What's to keep him from privately funding someone to disrupt and event or even threaten to attack him in order to gain sympathy and support from the Republican voters?

These are the sort of dark thoughts I have when waking up after a fun and booze-drenched St. Patrick's Parade day here in Milford. I'm not hungover, but merely coming back to reality and dealing with the awful stuff in the news and on Facebook and Twitter. Tuesday is a big day, with Florida, Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina and Illinois going to the polls. Trump can pretty much end the race by Wednesday morning with a good showing.

I'm going to watch what happens at Trump rallies for the next few days, and fervently hope that we see civility and common sense rule the events.