When You Believe He's Hitler ... the Normal Rules No Longer Apply

Words matter ... especially when heard by the unhinged.

If Cole Allen, the man charged with trying to assassinate President Trump, is found guilty of his crimes, he may very well spend the rest of his life locked up in prison.

This was not some social outcast living on the margins of society. He was a man of intellect, a man who graduated from one of America’s most prestigious research universities — the California Institute of Technology — a man who served as a leader of the school’s Christian Fellowship.

So how could such a man do what he’s accused of doing?

From his social media posts and his manifesto, we get a glimpse into his mindset. He didn’t just oppose Donald Trump — he despised him. “I experience rage thinking about everything this administration has done,” he wrote.

“Rage.” That word matters. Because rage isn’t simply about the force we conjure up to sound tough when we want to win an argument or to come off as morally superior when we’re trying to win an election. Rage is about something else entirely. It’s about seeing your opponent not simply as wrong, but as intolerable.

And when you get to that point, anything is possible. The normal rules of a civil society go out the window.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, psychoanalyst Jonathan Alpert offered an observation that should give all of us pause.

“When people are described as fundamentally dangerous or illegitimate,” he writes, “it changes how actions against them are seen. For most people, that language remains mere language. But for someone unstable, hearing it often enough can lower the psychological barrier to acting. It can begin to feel less like a choice and more like a kind of obligation.”

In other words, the leap from thinking to actually doing gets shorter. The internal voice that might have said, “this is wrong” gets quieter. And what once seemed unthinkable starts to feel not only conceivable — but obligatory.

That doesn’t mean rhetoric — even heated rhetoric — causes violence in any simple, direct way. For most of us “language remains mere language.” But it isn’t serious to pretend that words just bounce off the walls and float away.

And let’s be honest about the language that’s been used.

Donald Trump has been called a fascist. He’s been labeled an existential threat to democracy. He’s been compared — repeatedly — to Adolf Hitler. Not just in the fever swamps of the internet, but in mainstream discourse, from commentators, academics, and yes, politicians. Many, many politicians. During the 2024 presidential campaign, even Kamala Harris, when asked if she thought Donald Trump was a fascist, instantly replied, “Yes, I do. Yes, I do”

But if you truly believe that Donald Trump, or any political leader, is in the same league as one of history’s greatest monsters — then what exactly are you signaling to people who are less stable, less restrained, and more susceptible to extreme thinking?

That’s not a rhetorical question.

Because once you define someone as a uniquely dangerous, you’re no longer just arguing against him. You’re casting him as a problem that must be stopped.

But at what cost? That’s where things get murky. That’s where the lines blur.

Now, to be absolutely clear — and this shouldn’t even need saying, but in today’s climate it does — the responsibility for violence lies with the person who commits it. If Cole Allen is found guilty, he is responsible for his actions.

But responsibility and influence aren’t the same thing.

Allen didn’t invent his worldview out of thin air. He absorbed it from somewhere — from the sludge that defines way too much of our culture, our media — especially our social media — and our modern political life. He didn’t need to look hard to find people telling him, in one form or another, that Donald Trump wasn’t just wrong — but was dangerous, illegitimate, even evil.

Most people hear that and move on with their lives. They vote against him. They argue about him. And that’s usually the end of it.

But some people don’t stop there. Some people take the next step.

And when they do, we’re left trying to explain how something so extreme could happen — how an intelligent, educated person could cross a line most of us would never even think of approaching.

Maybe the better question is this: Why are we so surprised?

If we keep raising the temperature — if we keep telling ourselves that every election is a battle for the soul of the nation, that every opponent is an existential threat to democracy —then eventually someone is going to act like they believe it.

And when that happens, it won’t be enough to say, “That’s not what we meant.” Because at some point, we have to be honest about what we’re saying, about how others might hear it — and about what happens next.