April 28, 2017

A Kentucky man is facing charges of first-degree and fourth-degree assault, and three counts of wanton endangerment after taking a machete into a campus coffee shop and attacking people who disclosed that they were Democrats, according to a report by the Lexington Herald-Leader.

The attack occurred on the campus of Transylvania College, where Mitchell Adkins had attended before withdrawing in 2015.

“A guy came in, banged something, a hatchet or an ax, on the table and said ‘the day of reckoning has come,’” witness Tristan Reynolds said. “He asked somebody what their political affiliation was, they said ‘Republican’ and the guy said ‘you are safe.’ And then I realized what was going on and started getting people out.”

Adkins apparently has a grievance because he believes conservatives on campus are treated poorly. According to reports, he wrote a letter to the editor of the student newspaper claiming he was harassed on campus for his conservative views.

Adkins complained, “Being a Republican in this school makes me such a minority that I’ve had to face discrimination on a daily basis.”

“Transylvania is a predominantly Democratic school. I’m always happy to listen to other people’s opinions, but as soon as I give my own, I’m called a ‘bigot,’ an ‘assh*le,” some even go as far as ‘fascist Nazi,’” he wrote.

He continued, “With the election of (Republican) Matt Bevin as governor, I’ve become even more of a target for people claiming that I’m ‘responsible for ruining this country’ and that, somehow, I’m an evil person for what would make this state great,”

Apparently his resentment at "liberal bias" set him off, and he arrived at the coffee shop armed with a machete and knives, where he attacked two women before being arrested. One was taken to the hospital and one was treated at the scene. Both are expected to make full recoveries.

This assault is disturbing, not only because it happened at all, but because it is fed by the extremists on the right like David Horowitz who combine a toxic brew of claims about "liberal college campuses" with online raging against women in the name of men's rights.

This is the grievance culture of the right, and when mixed with someone who may already be disturbed or prone to violence, bad things happen. Like this.

Billionaires fund the grievance culture on campuses in the hopes of creating more conservative voters to serve them as their older voters die away. Blend in toxic masculinity and it's a formula for disaster. It's fortunate this wasn't worse than it was.

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