If the mainstream media were a snake, it would be swallowing its tail right now.  Liberal journalists, who completely failed to anticipate the Trump victory, are now striking out wildly, convinced that something terrible is about to happen because they failed to prevent Trump’s victory despite their best efforts.

Part of the response has been to shower extravagant attention on an obscure gathering of 200 people, losers to a man and woman, who assembled in the banner of a white nationalist group, the National Policy Institute, and made MSM dreams come true by shouting “Hail Trump!” and performing a version of the Nazi salute. 

This, of course, is visual catnip for Trump haters.

As a result, the gathering received massive coverage and was interpreted by deranged people as heralding a Nazi future for America under Trump/Hitler.  But the problem is that while they weren’t fooling many Trump supporters into second thoughts, the head of the snake, the journalists and editors (you know, the people who are supposed to be responsible and make sure nothing too off base gets from the reporter’s keyboard to the reading public), bought the propaganda.  That’s where the snake’s tail entered its jaws.

Jonah Bennett of The Daily Caller News Foundation explains what happened next:

National editor at Politico Michael Hirsh resigned after publishing the home addresses of alt-right figurehead Richard Spencer Tuesday morning and advocating for serious violence.

Politico confirmed his resignation following requests for comment from The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Stop whining about Richard B. Spencer, Nazi, and exercise your rights as decent Americans,” Hirsh wrote in a public Facebook post. “Here are his two addresses.” (snip)

While Hirsh’s initial post could have been charitably interpreted to imply advocacy of a non-violent protest outside of Spencer’s home or other similar non-violent actions, a subsequent question and answer clarified Hirsh’s intentions.

“Completely agree we should mobilize against his hateful ideas, but what does knowing his home addresses do?” one Facebook user asked Hirsh. “Send a letter? Confront him in person? Seems like counter-speech is the main thing we can do. You can call it ‘whining’ but I’m not sure that’s fair or constructive. Side note: Apparently the GSA-owned Ronald Reagan International Trade Center in DC felt obligated to host his organization’s event because it can’t discriminate against speech under the First Amendment, so there’s that problem, too.”

Hirsh responded in an unhinged manner: “I wasn’t thinking of a fucking letter, Doug. He lives part of the time next door to me in Arlington. Our grandfathers brought baseball bats to Bund meetings. Want to join me?”

Bennett explains the references to “Bund” and baseball bats. In the 1930s:

… the German-American Bund, a Nazi organization in the United States active in the mid-to-late 1930s, which promoted National Socialist ideology and was often subject to violent attacks by Jewish mobsters in New York City and Newark, New Jersey, using baseball bats.

So there can be no doubt that Hirsch was publicly inciting violence against people whose politics he disagrees with.  This could expose him to civil and criminal liability, potentially. 

He tried deleting the post, but it lives on, of course.

“These posts were clearly outside the bounds of acceptable discourse, and POLITICO editors regard them as a serious lapse of newsroom standards,” Politico Editor-In-Chief John Harris and Editor Carrie Budoff Brown told TheDCNF. “They crossed a line in ways that the publication will not defend, and editors are taking steps to ensure that such a lapse does not occur again.”
 

So the careers of liberal Trump-hating journalists are imploding as they panic based on their own apocalyptic fantasies and do remarkably self-destructive things.  I don’t see any signs of this subsiding.  The human toll will continue to rise.  The ruins of Hirsh’s career may eventually “encourage the others” to change their attitudes, but I am not counting on it.