Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was part of a warm-up act for Donald Trump’s “Keep America Great” rally at the American Airlines Center in downtown Dallas.

He didn’t disappoint those who came to cheer the president.

I was still working my way into the arena when Patrick took the stage, but I did see and hear him on the jumbo screen on the side of the AAC. He used the “e” word to describe foes of his conservative Republican policy machine.

He said “progressive socialist Democrats” aren’t just “our opponents; they are the enemy.” There you go. He went on to say they are the enemy of “liberty,” of “national security,” and I presume of the American way.

A future speaker of the U.S. House, Newt Gingrich, once declared during the 1994 Contract With America campaign that his aim was to make “Democrats the enemy of normal Americans.” Donald Trump declared the media to be “the enemy of the American people.”

Oh, there have been plenty of politicians who toss the “e” word around like that. Lt. Gov. Patrick is just the latest.

There is no need to wonder just how our political interaction has developed this level of coarseness.

I still prefer the approach sought by the late President George H.W. Bush that hoped to create a “kinder, gentler” nation. The “enemy” talk that I heard from Dan Patrick just makes me angry. We have enough anger out there already.