DID AN ACT OF POLITICAL TERRORISM PUT AN 81-YEAR-OLD DEMOCRAT IN THE HOSPITAL?

This happened over the weekend:

An inferno ripped through the waterfront home of a South Carolina judge and her ex-senator husband on Saturday, leaving three people hospitalized, according to authorities and reports.

Circuit Court Judge Diana Goodstein’s Edisto Beach home went up in flames around midday, sending plumes of black smoke into the air and forcing her husband, former state Sen. Arnold Goodstein (D-Charleston), to jump from the first floor to escape the blaze, the Post and Courier reported....

Sources close to Goodstein’s family confirmed Arnold was airlifted after breaking multiple bones in his hips, legs and feet after escaping from the four-bedroom, four-bathroom home, FitsNews reported.

It won't be easy for Arnold Goodstein to make a full recovery from those injuries -- he's 81 years old.

FITSNews says, "Agents of the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) are investigating" the fire, adding,

... multiple sources close to Goodstein told FITSNews the judge had been receiving death threats in the weeks leading up to the fire.

“She’s had multiple death threats over the years,” a judge close to Goodstein told FITSNews.

This might not be arson, although "S.C. chief justice John Kittredge referenced an 'explosion' on the property in an email update to judges," according to FITSNews.

If this was a targeted attack, we don't know the attacker's motive. Many people develop grievances against judges over the course of their careers.

However, there's this:

Last month, [Judge] Goodstein had temporarily blocked the state’s election commission from releasing its voter files to the Department of Justice, a decision that was openly criticized by Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon and later reversed by the state Supreme Court. The DOJ had sought the information, including names, addresses, driver’s license numbers, and social security numbers, of over three million registered voters as part of President Donald Trump’s March executive order restricting non-citizens from registering to vote. (Non-citizens are already not allowed to vote in federal and state elections.)

Here was Dhillon's tweet:

🚨🚨🚨This @TheJusticeDept’s @CivilRights will not stand for a state court judge’s hasty nullification of our federal voting laws. I will allow nothing to stand in the way of our mandate to maintain clean voter rolls.

One Citizen, One Vote! 🤨 pic.twitter.com/g4OoNr2oyZ

— AAGHarmeetDhillon (@AAGDhillon) September 5, 2025

And, of course, Co-President of the United States Stephen Miller has

repeatedly attacked judges that rule against President Donald Trump, telling supporters they are being oppressed by "judicial tyranny," and even accused a federal judge Trump himself appointed of waging "legal insurrection" when she blocked the administration from sending the National Guard to occupy Portland, Oregon.

Did Congressman Daniel Goldman overreach? Or did he hit a nerve?

You are vile. Deeply warped and vile. While the Trump Administration has launched the first-ever government-wide effort to combat and prosecute illegal doxing, sinister threats and political violence you continue to push despicable lies, demented smears, malicious defamation and…

— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) October 6, 2025

In any case, an 81-year-old man is in the hospital. We used to assume that top government officials would express sympathy under circumstances like this, and would want to lower the temperature regardless of the victims' party affiliation. We don't hold Trump to that standard.

Even if this isn't directly linked to the Trump administration's words and deeds, I have to wonder whether Trump is partly responsible for the recent uptick in high-profile attacks, even when the attackers' motives are apolitical, vague, or the product of mental illness -- and even when the attackers are critics of Trump and the right.

Those of us who lives in cities sometimes encounter people who are mentally ill, agitated, and threatening. We've learned to keep calm around these people. It can help reduce their agitation and limits our own risk.

I believe that Donald Trump's total-war presidency is the opposite of this. I think it's leading to agitation among those in the general population who are struggling to resist violent impulses. I also think it's sending a message that conflict and violence are good.

I think even apolitical people who are committing high-profile and very public crimes are responding to the intense agitation in the air. I also think that people with political grievances -- across the political spectrum -- are hearing the leaders of our country say on a daily basis that violence is preferable to peace. Under these circumstances, I'm not surprised that grandiose forms of violence seem to be on the rise, even as ordinary crime is declining.

Violence is in the air. Trump's violent pronouncements and actions are persuading other people to imitate those in authority. And so here we are.