Incremental Escalation

As I've mentioned before, I'm concerned about the gradual ratcheting up of political conflict in this country. I'm not sure it's avoidable, I just think we need to be aware of what we're getting into. Those of us on the left (myself included) have been experiencing extraordinary glee at the widespread investigations of the Republican leadership. It's fund to watch the right getting back what they did to us in the 1990's. Seeing Bill Kristol talk about the "criminalization of politics" really gives me the chuckles.

But what are the consequences of all of this? I suspect that the forever-aggrieved conservatives will decide at some point in the future, when all of their leadership is behind bars or in disgrace, that the Democrats used the courts to overturn an election. When they decide that Democrats will stop at nothing to win power, by hook or by crook. Y'know - the whole phenomenon of projecting your own sins onto others. What happens when the conservatives reach this state of frenzied, indignant victimhood? Will they escalate again? And if so, how so? My god, what's left to escalate short of political assassination and armed violence?