‘You know what, I wanted to hit a couple of those speakers so hard. I would have hit them — no, no — I was gonna hit them. I was all set. … I was gonna hit one guy in particular, a very little guy.”

So said Donald Trump July 28 in Davenport, Iowa, referring to speakers at the Democratic National Convention that month.

Television-wrestling language aside, what strikes me most is how the violence of his words is a form of violence in and of itself. Those who have had the troubling fate to grow up in a house of a verbally abusive parent know that the “injuries” sustained penetrate deeper than any fist can reach, taking sometimes more than a lifetime to heal.

After all, as someone who has suffered observed, “the word you speak is the house you live in.” Most everyone is aware that before the actual blows of the fist, there is the rapid-fire use of harsh insults. Those of us who have experienced the biting words and obscene gestures while standing for a decade or more at the corner of the Hampshire County courthouse to oppose the harsh sanctions and subsequent criminal invasion of Iraq, learned early on that to respond in kind would only precipitate the physical harm that the taunters desired.

We were taught that the best we could do was to absorb the outrage, letting our initial anger go, in arm-in-arm solidarity with the ones standing with you.

How are we to react to the virtual violence that a presidential candidate hurls? It is not one of either fight or flight, but rather one of adhering to the discipline of not taking the assault personally. Why? Because this practice helps us to hold the hate aloft for all to see its inherent ugliness.

Even better, not taking the abuse to heart frees us to confine the psychic damage to a minimum and to join with those who today stand beside you; to experience the strength of numbers of like-minded souls who also hope for a leader who will not browbeat them into submission.

Putting verbal violence in its place, emboldens us to move forward together, to assure our frightened loved ones – and our beloved nation – that we have the power and the wherewithal to right the worthy ship of democracy, now listing from the dangerous weight of a cult whose leader’s idea of problem-solving is blood on the knuckles.

Lest this sound too alarming, consider this: in 2015, alone, citizens of Massachusetts bought no fewer than 10,000 semi-automatic rifles (now deemed copycats of an illegal class of firearms by our Attorney General, Maura Healey).

Even if 5 to 10 percent of those in possession became radicalized, repeated fiery language might well incite them to act. What I do know is this: When I asked my wife about posting a Hillary Clinton sign out front, she asked, “Will our home be safe?”

The Rev. Peter Kakos lives in Northampton.