• NYTimes columnist Charles Blow: Republicans are “America’s problem,” a “threat to our democracy.”
• Former CIA Director Michael Hayden: There is “no political force more dangerous” than Republicans.

Words have consequences. When Hitler declared, “The Jews are our misfortune,” he was expressing an opinion. But that opinion led to 6 million dead, including over 1 million dead children.

So if Republicans are “dangerous” and “threat to our democracy,” what do we do about it? And if Republicans are “America’s problem” – another way of saying “our misfortune” – what then?

People don’t throw vitriol, then shake hands across the isle and make a golf date. They don’t spew out bile, then smile and go out to dinner with their new friends. Violent language too often is the prelude to violent actions.

But there is a problem here. About one-half of Americans voted for Trump, and they have by far the majority of the guns. The first thing a kid learns in the school yard, and the first thing a bar patron discovers, is that there are some people you can hit, and some people you can’t hit.

A small bit of advice to witty columnists and brilliant former CIA directors: Be careful whom you hit. At some point – which cannot be predicted but which is painfully obvious in retrospect – they will hit back. And then, as we used to say, it’s a Donnybrook.