As tensions heat up between North Korea and the rest of the world, we’re reminded once again of how the tiny despotic regime operates.

Among many other disturbing practices, the North Korean starts the anti-American propaganda young. In kindergarten, the children learn to hate the “American b*******.” The principal of the kindergarten “pulls out a dummy of an American soldier with a beaked nose and straw-colored hair and explains that the students beat him with batons or pelt him with stones.”

They teach them to fear and eternally hate the Americans.

In kindergartens, “U.S. soldiers are depicted as cruel, ghoulish barbarians with big noses and fiendish eyes. Teeth bared, they brand prisoners with hot irons, set wild dogs on women and wrench out a girl’s teeth with pliers. One drawing shows an American soldier crushing a girl with his boot, blood pouring from her mouth, her eyes wild with fear and pain.”

Sick, yes—but the dark little nation illustrates a great point: if the story is strong enough, vividly illustrated enough, persists for long enough, and told by enough people, it becomes fact to its audience—and people behave accordingly.

I wrote a piece two weeks back about we’re handing down a societal tradition of monstrous, unethical, disingenuous, and dishonest behavior to our children, and that it is largely traceable to the far Left—thanks to the media, entertainment, and political class’s purposeful distortions of the truth. Again, we on the right don’t run the engines of influence. The far left does. But we’ll get back to that.

Yesterday, with the shooting of Congressman Steve Scalise among others, that conversation just got a lot more serious.

The thing is (and what I didn’t touch on last time), this society that you on the far Left are creating isn’t just about stifling real debate. This is also about ginning up fear and hate.

When you tell people enough times that the American Right hates minorities, hates the elderly, hates the sick, hates women, hates immigrants, hates homosexuals, hates Muslims, hates the poor—hates <<insert class of people here here>>, what happens?

When you tell people enough times that there’s no daylight between the Ted Cruzes of the world and scum like white supremacist Dylan Roof and crazies like the Westboro Baptists, what happens?

When you tell people enough times that the American Right is the literal enemy—not just ideologically, but actually, physically the enemy; that the American Right is <<insert your favorite dictator here>>, what happens?

People reach a boiling point. Adding insult to injury, the far Left fuels it with rhetoric like this:

Huffington Post writer Michelangelo Signorile calls for the Left to stalk the right (emphasis mine): “They should be hounded by protestors everywhere, especially in public ― in restaurants, in shopping centers, in their districts, and yes, on the public property outside their homes and apartments, in Washington and back in their home states.”

Senior Newseek writer Kurt Eichenwald wished illness and even torture on those who supported the AHCA: “I hope every GOPr who voted 4 Trumpcare sees a family member get long term condition, lose insurance, and die.” “I want the GOPrs who support this to feel the pain in their own families because I want them to be tortured.” “They want to drink beer celebrating killing people? Then it should be their loved ones who die.”

CNN host and Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria on the merits of a play portraying the violent assassination of Donald Trump: “If you’re in NYC, go see Julius Caesar, free in Central Park, brilliantly interpreted for Trump era. A masterpiece.”

Madonna at an anti-Trump rally: “Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.”

Kathy Griffin holds up a severed head of the president: “Kathy Griffin wants Donald Trump‘s head … but she wants it bloody and detached from his body. The comedian posed for the gory shot during a photo session with famed photog Tyler Shields, who’s known for edgy, shocking pics.”

Snoop Dogg pretends to kill the president: “A new rap video from Snoop Dogg has stirred controversy with its mock execution of a clown dressed as President Donald Trump.”

Combine the narrative that the Right hates all things and all people that aren’t white, male, and conservative, with the increasingly accepted idea that violence is an a-okay way to deal with said haters, and what do you get?

A fed-up, angry, incensed dude who shoots up a prominent GOP member of Congress, maybe?

Par for the course in today’s bold new world, Congressman Scalise’s shooter James Hodgkinson was quickly defended on Twitter by a writer who actually mused about whether or not it was an act of self-defense: “If the shooter has a serious health condition then is taking potshots at the GOP house leadership considered self defense?”  

Salon.com came out and criticized people like me, saying that “before the details of the incident were fully clear notable Republicans were quick to jump to conclusions that satisfied their partisan views.”

(There wouldn’t happen to be a Salon.com article or two chastising the far Left for their wholly false, knee-jerk blaming of the Right for the Gabby Giffords and Aurora, Colorado shootings, would there be?)

I’ve digressed.

Look at the narrative I outlined above. Look at the rhetoric I’ve outlined above. It’s not coming from the right. So doesn’t it behoove us to start looking at where it IS coming from? Isn’t that just common sense?

Let me be very clear. I’m not blaming Bernie Sanders for the fact that a Bernie Sanders fan shot Congressman Scalise yesterday. I’m certainly not suggesting that all left-leaning Americans applaud or would even engage in violence.

James Hodgkinson was a bad man. A crazy man. He alone is PERSONALLY responsible for what he did. But we would be dishonest and dangerously reckless if we said that when the far Left gins up a false, sensationalized Nazi-like picture of their political opponents while simultaneously taking pages straight out of the Saul Alinsky playbook of violent societal chaos, nobody gets influenced.

That’s lunacy.

We don’t operate in silos; we are influenced by the culture that fuels our inner thoughts and backs up the deepest, darkest corners of our minds. It’s even worse when you consider how society’s rhetoric and justifications of violence affects the sick in the head.

No one’s perfect, and I’m sure some of you will dredge up some example of a right-wing fanatic who went off the deep end. You’ll probably even dredge up a couple of recent examples from then-candidate Donald Trump, which you’d be justified in doing–but you’d be missing the point: by and large, Donald Trump and the Right hasn’t created this “reality;” the far Left has (and continues to do so) en masse. That’s what I’m getting at.

I’m simply asking that we look at the factors. That we have the conversation.

As I pointed out in my last piece, you on the far Left at this point in time run the media, much of the political commentary and discourse, and the entertainment industry. You are then able to create the mass narrative; a narrative that then goes on to influence nutjobs and radicals like Hodgkinson. That’s just common sense.

And all I’m begging all my friends on the Left (but also all of us) to consider is this: honestly, truthfully, deep, deep down in places you don’t talk about on Facebook or Twitter … is that the America you want?

Choose wisely.

Mary Ramirez is a full-time writer, creator of www.afuturefree.com (a political commentary blog), and contributor to The Chris Salcedo Show (TheBlaze Radio Network, M-F, 3-5. ET). She can be reached at: afuturefree@aol.com; or on Twitter: @AFutureFree