Violence & Politics in America

 

Today America stopped for a bit and, in some places, looked inward.

Thinkers, scholars, politicians, moms, and dads asked; ‘is this who we are, as a country?’ as they once again observed violence on the national stage. Many elected officials and the President were quick to decry the shooting at a Maga rally in rural Pennslyvania. Secret Service sharpshooters immediately killed the shooter who had been perched on a rooftop outside the perimeter of the event. His shots minimally wounded the former president even as they killed an onlooker and seriously wounded two other men.

His supporters claimed this event would win the election for him. Since he has promoted the victimization of his identity and voiced a religious martyr complex previously, there is little doubt that he will try again to use this to every advantage. Even as the Secret Service was trying to move him off the stage, he rose with a raised fist to show his perseverance or something.

However, some Republican Congressmen, (and Senator JD Vance) a known VP candidate with no facts to support their claims, blamed President Biden for the shooting. Will conspiracy theories be next? There should be an investigation into this incident since, sadly, candidates need protection. Authorities identified the gunman as a 20-year-old resident from a nearby town, known to many as a loner. A loner with a semi-automatic rifle, where have we heard that before?

Many in the press pointed out ongoing references to violence in speeches since before January 6^th by the former president. They noted his references to needing Mike Pence to “do the right thing” and not halting cries to “hang Mike Pence” during the insurrection on that horrific day. Some on his staff, as demonstrated by the Jan 6^th Congressional Committee, noted him watching the events all afternoon without dismay or taking any actions.

Axios described that instead of politics being the art of the possible with academic discussions about policy wonk concerns, such as maintaining the social safety net or funding specific programs, current politics have become personal. Disagreements are not theoretical, but “in your face” and confrontational, threatening one’s sense of self. Since the insurrection, political dialogue has teetered on the edge of civility.

The former president, who has still not acknowledged Bidens win in 2020, spoke frequently of bloodbaths in the streets if he is not reelected and called for supporters to show up outside the courtrooms of his many trials. He lied about the crowds present in the area (there were none). Promising to jail his enemies when elected, he mentioned court-martialling Liz Cheney and executing former generals who had not done his bidding. He typically uses harsh rhetoric and promotes lies in his speeches, which coarsens our political language from now on. When then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was viciously attacked in his home by a Canadian man, he pushed it off as a sexual encounter gone bad. He mocked the Governor of Michigan when a kidnapping plot was discovered against her. And who can forget the rumors he spread about Hillary Clinton and his cries to “lock her up?’ Claiming any actions taken against him are political persecution, his refusal to return official documents shows his disdain for the law.

More recently, just before the debate, he claimed President Biden would need to be drugged in order to take part. But he didn’t just say that he yelled out about the authorities sticking a shot in “his ass” to get him ready. This use of coarse speech repeatedly conditions his audience to expect more of the same and instead of demonstrating what an uncouth boob he is, these actions lower the bar for political speech and allow his followers to mimic his lead. Consequently, they applaud his breaking of the rules. I wonder what they might think if he were ever to move against their beliefs? Of course, during the debate, he repeatedly told lies and refused to answer questions asked. He would not commit to accepting the results of the election if he did not win.

This man, a convicted felon, a fraudster, and an assaulter of women, is now trying to overturn his felony on grounds of immunity granted by his tame Supreme Court. Americans need to remind both DJT and his court that Americans do not want a king.

David Frum, writing in the Atlantic, said this today:

(I only quote a portion of his remarks)

“It is sadly incorrect to say, as so many have, that political violence “has no place” in American society. Assassinations, lynchings, riots, and pogroms have stained every page of American political history. That has remained true to the present day. In 2016, and even more in 2020, Trump supporters brought weapons to intimidate opponents and vote-counters. Trump and his supporters envision a new place for violence as their defining political message in the 2024 election.

Fascist movements are secular religions. Like all religions, they offer martyrs as their proof of truth. The Mussolini movement in Italy built imposing monuments to its fallen comrades. The Trump movement now improves on that: The leader himself will be the martyr in chief, his own blood the basis for his bid for power and vengeance.

Other societies have backslid to authoritarianism because of some extraordinary crisis: economic depression, hyperinflation, military defeat, civil strife. In 2024, U.S. troops are nowhere at war. The American economy is booming, providing spectacular and widely shared prosperity. A brief spasm of mild post-pandemic inflation has been overcome. Indicators of social health have abruptly turned positive since Trump left office after years of deterioration during his term. Crime and fatal drug overdoses are declining in 2024; marriages and births are rising. Even the country’s problems indirectly confirm the country’s success: Migrants are crossing the border in the hundreds of thousands, because they know, even if Americans don’t, that the U.S. job market is among the hottest on Earth.

One reason this self-harm is nearing consummation is that American society is poorly prepared to understand and respond to radical challenges, once those challenges gain a certain mass. For nearly a century, “radical” in U.S. politics has usually meant “fringe”: Communists, Ku Kluxers, Black Panthers, Branch Davidians, Islamist jihadists. Radicals could be marginalized by the weight of the great American consensus that stretches from social democrats to business conservatives. Sometimes, a Joe McCarthy or a George Wallace would throw a scare into that mighty consensus, but in the past, such challengers rarely formed stable coalitions with accepted stakeholders in society. Never gaining an enduring grip on the institutions of state, they flared up and burned out.

Nobody seems to have language to say: We abhor, reject, repudiate, and punish all political violence, even as we maintain that Trump remains himself a promoter of such violence, a subverter of American institutions, and the very opposite of everything decent and patriotic in American life.

The Republican National Convention, which opens this week, will welcome to its stage apologists for Vladimir Putin’s Russia and its aggression against U.S. allies. Trump’s own infatuation with Russia and other dictatorships has not dimmed even slightly with age or experience. Yet all of these urgent and necessary truths must now be subdued to the ritual invocation of “thoughts and prayers” for someone who never gave a thought or uttered a prayer for any of the victims of his own many incitements to bloodshed. The president who used his office to champion the rights of dangerous people to own military-type weapons says he was grazed by a bullet from one such assault rifle…..

Those conventional phrases are inscribing Trump into a place in American life that he should have forfeited beyond redemption on January 6, 2021. All decent people welcome the sparing of his life. Trump’s reckoning should be with the orderly process of law, not with the bloodshed he rejoiced in when it befell others. He and his allies will exploit a gunman’s vicious criminality as their path to exonerate past crimes and empower new ones. Those who stand against Trump and his allies must find the will and the language to explain why these crimes, past and planned, are all wrong, all intolerable—and how the gunman and Trump, at their opposite ends of a bullet’s trajectory, are nonetheless joined together as common enemies of law and democracy.”

Since there have been just over 24 hours since this happened, I am certain we will learn more soon. President Biden used an Oval Office speech tonight to reassure the nation and called for unity without violence. Previously, he suspended his campaign and held his ads for a while. He mentioned speaking to the former president and conveyed well wishes and healing prayers in what was described as a cordial exchange, because that is what civilized people do!

This week we will have the chance to watch the Republican Convention (and guest speaker Tucker Carlson) and see what tone the party will take. This week is when the VP (suspense!) selection will also be announced.

I will leave you with a YouTube link to a storied SNL skit with Emily Litella about violins (violence) on TV. Maybe we can all use a laugh tonight because reality is kinda tough.

“Til next week-Peace!