If a deranged leftist attempts to murder a sitting Supreme Court justice but the mainstream media barely covers it, did it actually happen?

That’s the metaphysical question posed by columnist Katrina Trinko, and it bears consideration. Because the relative silence since a 26-year-old California man told police he intended to break into Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home and kill him — and showed up at the house to do it — has been all too telling, even for our woefully biased press.

“When it comes to political violence in the United States today,” writes Trinko, “here’s a maxim you can always rely on: If the victim or likely victim is on the right, the perpetrator is simply a lone wolf. But if the victim or likely victim is on the left, the perpetrator was fueled by dangerous rhetoric.”

Whether Kavanaugh’s would-be assassin was a one-off, a lone wolf, remains to be seen. But as we wrote yesterday, this sick young man didn’t grab his murderous intentions out of thin air. He grabbed them from the world around him — from the mainstream media, and from Democrat politicians, and from the leftist Mob.

Indeed, recent history is replete with Democrat incitements to violence, from Chuck Schumer to Maxine Waters to Cory Booker to Nancy Pelosi to Eric Holder to Hillary Clinton. Then there are the loathsome little tough-guy Hollywood types, like Robert De Niro and Johnny Depp, who fantasize about everything from punching a sitting president to assassinating him. (Donald Trump, that is, in case you wondered.) Even Madonna dreamed about “blowing up the White House.”

These thoughts, in the mind of a sick man, are deadly dangerous. Yesterday, we saw House Democrats try to sell us a phony narrative of Donald Trump as the orchestrator of the violence on January 6, 2021, but the Democrats and their mainstream media fellow travelers have done a pathetic job of denouncing the violent rhetoric that emanates overwhelmingly from their side. The New York Times buried coverage of this assassination attempt way back on page A20.

Again, are we surprised about this attempt on Kavanaugh’s life? After all, a U.S. senator called out and threatened two sitting Supreme Court justices by name. “I want to tell you Gorsuch, I want to tell you Kavanaugh,” said Chuck Schumer, “you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” Senate Democrats falsely and maliciously portrayed Kavanaugh as a rapist during his confirmation hearings. And now he’s reportedly joining a majority “overturning abortion rights.”

As National Review’s Andy McCarthy writes, “With such incendiary rhetoric by the political class whose obligation is to protect the Court and the justices, who could be surprised that the rabid protests have moved to the homes of Republican-appointed justices?”

And those are the two components of our current condition: Not only do those on the Left foment violence through their rhetoric and their actions, but our criminal justice system also refuses to do anything about it. It’s why the leftist Mob has operated with relative impunity — from desecrating landmarks to toppling statues to setting police stations and federal courthouses afire to tossing Molotov cocktails into police vans.

And now we see that criminal Mob gathered in front of the homes of our Supreme Court justices.

This is how a country comes apart.

Make no mistake: Their presence in front of the justices’ homes is unlawful. As McCarthy writes: “The law forbids people from picketing or parading outside the home of a judge (or a juror, or a witness). … Violence is not an element of the offense. Picketing and parading are forms of political pressure. There is no free-expression right to engage in them with the intent to influence a court case. The threat that protests will corrupt judicial proceedings — causing decisions to be made out of fear rather than faithful application of the law — is too great. Political pressure is for policy debates. It can have no place in judicial proceedings if we are to have the rule of law.”

Urgent memo to Attorney General Merrick Garland: Enforce the damned law. Now. Things are spinning our of control, and the blood will be on your hands.

We’ll say this: One person on the Left seems to get it. Yesterday morning, CNN political analyst David Gregory pulled no punches with his colleagues:

This is horrifying. I mean, activism has its place, of course, speaking out has its place, but to threaten a Supreme Court justice and his family outside of his home is beyond the pale, cannot be tolerated. Every politician has an obligation to stand up, condemn this and to do something about it. And the truth is that a lot of people on the left who are in political power are being so hypocritical about this. They lecture us all the time about the excesses of the right, including Donald Trump on January 6, fomenting mob violence, and yet they’re out there [saying] that it’s okay to stand outside these people’s homes.

Good for him. But he’s only one voice. Time will tell if anyone else on the Left has the guts to speak out.

The denunciations should start at the top. As law professor Jonathan Turley points out, “There has to be a moment of decency that comes out of the president that says enough. He’s failed that test so far.”

Yes he has.