Trump's supporters and their bloody words of war

The vocabulary of armed conflict is inescapable in national political contests.

Underdog candidates are "insurgents." Campaigns fight for votes in "battleground states." And as this 2016 race reaches its decisive days, the prospect of "revolution" hangs in the air.
It has been a relentless theme of the past 18 months. Bernie Sanders called for a "political revolution" in almost every speech, as he sold a policy outline meant to upend the economic status quo. Donald Trump has been using such terms for years, though in darker tones.
And in more graphic detail than the American public has ever seen. The Republican nominee and his allies -- many of them drawing on the tea party's glorification of Revolutionary War-era imagery -- have colored this election season with the rhetoric of war and bloodshed. As if making America "great again" were as much a military campaign as a political one.
As Mitt Romney fell to President Barack Obama on election night in 2012, Trump -- armed with his phone and incomplete information -- tweeted that Obama had lost the popular vote, then called for "a revolution in this country!" He deleted that post but not the one calling for a "march on Washington."
On Wednesday, former Rep. Joe Walsh became the latest in a long line of high-profile Trump supporters to invoke a bloody revolt and firearms in response to the GOP candidate's potential defeat on Election Day.
"On November 8th, I'm voting for Trump. On November 9th, if Trump loses, I'm grabbing my musket," Walsh wrote to his more than 78,000 followers. "You in?"