The life and death of Ashli Babbitt

How did someone who voted for Barack Obama become a passionate insurrectionist, who ended up bleeding to death on the floor in front of the Speaker’s Lobby in the U.S. Capitol?

The short answer is that Donald Trump told Ashli Babbitt, in person, to attack the seat of the American government, and she followed his orders until a bullet stopped her.

The longer answer involves the story of how her mind was gradually poisoned by everything from Tucker Carlson’s nightly lies to QAnon’s unhinged ranting about secret conspiracies to sell children into sexual bondage.

But the person who is most responsible for her death (ETA, besides herself, which I should have made explicit) by far, is Donald Trump. Not nearly enough attention and emphasis is being given to the fact that all of the post-election madness sweeping over this country is a product of nothing but Trump’s lies and delusions about how that election was supposedly stolen from him. And a lot of other people — the guilty, the innocent, and those somewhere in between — are likely to die over the next eight days, for the same reason.