Political hostility escalates: “Is America headed toward a civil war?”

“If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” This is how Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) urged protesters in Los Angeles to treat Trump administration officials in public.

This after White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a Virginia restaurant last Friday. That same day, Florida attorney general Pam Bondi was bullied at a movie screening in Tampa by hecklers who had to be deterred by her security personnel. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was jeered at a restaurant, as was White House official Stephen Miller.

The rancor may not stop with political officials. MSNBC’s Donny Deutsch: “If you vote for Trump then you, the voter, you, not Donald Trump, are standing at the border, like Nazis, going ‘you here, you here.’”

By this logic, attacks on Trump administration officials are likely to extend to Trump supporters. And they are likely to respond in kind.

Is this a civil war?

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D¬NY) responded to Rep. Waters by stating from the Senate floor, “No one should call for the harassment of political opponents. That’s not right. That’s not American.” And House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called for “unity from sea to shining sea.”

However, this conflict will not end by calls for civility.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a law professor writing for USA Today, responds to the political animosity of these days under the headline, “Is America headed toward a civil war? Sanders, Nielsen incidents show it has already begun.”

Professor Reynolds notes that “Hollywood has basically turned its products, and its award shows, into showcases for ‘the resistance.’ Americans are already sorting themselves into communities that are predominantly red or blue.”

He’s right. And the…