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Last Monday night, nearly a month after Trump-supporting insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol looking to overturn a democratic election and, in some cases, kill U.S. lawmakers, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Instagram Live to share her harrowing account of that day.

Traumatized not only by the close encounter with people who were there to harm her but also the PTSD she suffers as a result of a previous sexual assault, Ocasio-Cortez said that as she hid in another congresswomans office, she thought she was going to die.

She was inarguably right to be terrified. Terrorism was, in part, the goal of the Capitol insurrection. Last month, in fact, a 34-year-old Texan named Garret Miller was arrested for taking part in the riot and posting violent threats online, including a tweet that simply said, Assassinate AOC.

But to the many on the right who have told her and other Democrats to move on from those events, Ocasio-Cortez says they were using the same tactics of every other abuser who just tells you to move on. Just a cursory scroll through Twitter in the wake of her powerful testimony proves her point.

This is a masterclass in emotional manipulation, journalist Michael Tracey says.

Only AOC can make the Capitol riots all about herself, Breanna Morello tweets.

Members of congress lie, including AOC. Especially AOC, Austin Petersen says.

Sadly, this is not surprising. In the ugly, divisive and tribal political hellscape in which we are currently living, AOC is a reviled figure on the right, ergo we shouldnt expect even the revelation that shed been sexually assaulted, or that she was fearing for her life on Jan. 6, cowering in a closet and wondering aloud if shell live to be a mother one day to be met with basic decency or empathy by some hardened partisans who see only enemy avatars, not actual people.

The rioters who breached the Capitol, the ones who shouted hang Mike Pence, the women who went looking for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to shoot her in the friggin brain, the man who beat a police officer with an American flag, another who attacked a police officer with a hockey stick, another who etched Murder the Media into a door inside the building, the people who planted pipe bombs around Washington, D.C., that day, the ones who marched swastikas into the peoples house, the ones who carried Confederate flags and white pride signs they werent thinking about the people in that building, only their own hate.

They werent thinking about moms and dads, daughters and sons, grandparents and grandchildren in that building when they went looking for scalps. They didnt see Officer Brian Sicknick as Charles and Gladys son, or Ken and Craigs brother, when they killed him with a fire extinguisher. They didnt see Pelosi as Bellas grandma or Pence as Charlottes dad.

The Republican lawmakers like Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who taunted their supporters into fighting the election results, hyping baseless claims of fraud and stolen elections, werent thinking about the people on the other side of the anger they were stoking. They werent thinking about the human cost of all that frothing, fearmongering and incitement. Remarkably and chillingly, they dont appear to be even now, as they continue to spread the lies.

This kind of unconscionable moral rot has infected America deep in its core. Its in our partisan politics, our self-destructive culture wars, our hysterical media and our addiction to hate.

Its becoming clearer with every passing day that amid all the things posing an imminent threat to our way of life disease, climate change, war its truly our inability to see each other as people before politics thats going to destroy us.

S.E. Cupp is the host of S.E. Cupp Unfiltered on CNN.

Categories:Opinion | S.E. Cupp Columns

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