No.Nonsense.

Incendiary words have become the norm. Violent rhetoric is common. Memes that celebrate Trump’s eventual death are all over social media. Comedians are joking about Melania becoming a widow. Names like Hitler are everyday fare.

More than one assassination attempt has occurred. Active threats are regularly thwarted.

And this past weekend, multiple shots were fired just outside the White House Correspondents Dinner with Trump and most of his administration present inside. A madman went through a security checkpoint with a shotgun, a handgun, and several knives and began firing.

Cole Allen shared his motivation for the violence he carried out Saturday night. “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” he wrote.

It brings me back to that existential question, “If you could go back in time and kill Hitler would you do it?” The answer is, “Of course!”

So if you continually call Trump by the same name, are you not saying he is worthy of death and we are better off with him gone?

If you say you’re anxiously awaiting when that news comes down that he has died, are you not engaging in the same incendiary rhetoric you abhor from him?

I get the disagreement. For readers of this column you know I have had my own crisis of conscience about voting for him. But I would never celebrate his death. I would never use language that invokes violent images. I would never stoop to the level of allowing my words to become what I loathe about him.

If I do, how can I claim any moral high ground? How can I call him out for his behavior and then engage in the same behavior?

We need to stop. We need to be better people who rise above it all. We can disagree politically. We can vote out his party and lame duck him for the next two years. We can be vocal in our opposition. What we cannot do is to continue in this language that calls for those who don’t have mental stability to carry out violence that cannot be walked back. Not only could we be burying our president but we could be allowing for the taking of innocent lives as well. Saturday night, that dinner was attended by Erica Kirk whose husband was killed by a sniper’s bullet because he dared to speak his beliefs. Melania was sitting next to her husband. Kelly Miller, wife of White House assistant chief of staff Stephen Miller was there. She is eight months pregnant. Karoline Leavitt, White House spokesperson, is nine months pregnant. Usha Vance just entered her third trimester. What if, in his assault where his goal was to take out as many of the administration officials as he could, Allen struck one of them with a bullet? What if he struck one of the unborn children?

And no matter how much we might dislike Trump himself, who are we to celebrate the loss of a husband, father, and a grandfather? Those who love him for who he is outside of the public eye are the ones who would suffer most.

For us, we need to just stop. We need to be better people. We need to scale back on the hateful words and the violent discourse. When 25% of the population believes political violence is justified, we have missed the mark on upholding what is right. We are Americans and we are better than that.