The election of President Barack Obama was supposed to reintroduce the United States to the… The election of President Barack Obama was supposed to reintroduce the United States to the international community. Instead of an incoherent and incompetent leader, the nation now had an intellectual and skilled president as its representative.

This was certainly put on display during the G-20 Summit in our backyard.

Nevertheless, I fear that in the midst of this supposed positive reintroduction to the world, the United States has descended into a worse place.

Last week, the U.S. Secret Service investigated a Facebook poll. The poll, which asks users whether Obama should be killed, offers respondents the option of clicking “Yes,” “No,” “Maybe” or “If he cuts my health care.”

I struggle to decide which is more shocking in this situation: the fact that this was polled on Facebook or that 730 people actually responded to this outrageous query. In the end, the Secret Service did not press charges because the poll was created by a juvenile.

On Sunday, former President Bill Clinton appeared on “Meet the Press.” Host David Gregory asked Clinton if he thought a “vast right-wing conspiracy” targets Obama as Clinton was targeted during his administration.

Clinton said, “Oh, you bet. Sure it is.”

Though Clinton acknowledged that the demographic differences between 2009 and the early 1990s have suppressed the severity and breadth of this “right-wing conspiracy,” he answered in a manner that took the notion for fact — that there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that such a thing exists.

Perhaps the term “conspiracy” should not even apply anymore.

The idea that right-wing radicals — many of whom have hour-long blocks on Fox News — are somehow conspiring to tear down the Obama administration and enact any measures that ensure Obama’s liberal policies fail should be an all but certifiable fact to most Americans.

Roughly one month ago, U.S. Census Bureau worker William Sparkman was found hanged in the Clay County, Ky. Something added to the horrific and grisly scene: The word “Fed” was scrawled across his chest when officials discovered the body hanging from a tree.

Though no conclusions have been proven from the incident, it certainly appears that Sparkman was brutally murdered for being a federal employee.

Most Americans will find it hard to forget the Oklahoma City bombing from 14 years ago.

On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh killed 168 and injured 680 workers in the Oklahoma City federal building by detonating a truck bomb. McVeigh, who sympathized with ultra-right-wing authors, was later executed because of his actions.

Suddenly, with the events that have happened in the United States over the past few weeks, with Clinton’s declaration that there still exists a “vast right-wing conspiracy,” perhaps we should pay more attention to the current state of affairs.

How has the United States descended to a place where the question of whether the president should be killed circulates on popular public forums?

How has it become a place where federal employees are strung up and killed like dolls, where members of Congress — for the first time in the institution’s history — are ignoring the basic traditions that have long been defining traits for our government, where pictures of the president are defaced and protesters show up at town halls with handguns and rifles?

Are these the images that now depict what our democracy has become?

Over the brief course of the Obama administration, anti-government sentiments have run rampant. Whether those remarks were responding to Obama’s efforts to reform health care in the United States or the ludicrous charges that the president is not actually an American citizen, frighteningly propagated anti-government and anti-Obama messages have captivated citizens nationwide.

Those words have now manifested themselves in actions.

With hate speech infecting virtually the entire nation, it appears that unless Americans can somehow manage to reframe their conceptions of government and the way in which they participate, the question is no longer if an unfortunate event similar to the Oklahoma City bombing will occur — the question is, “When?”

Let’s hope this does not take place, but if recent events and Clinton’s remarks are any indication, we might be on our way.

E-mail Shane at [email protected].