Can the US's Political System Remain Stable in the Face of Growing Threats of Violence?
Note to readers:
Last week, I wrote "Debt Fear-Mongering Has Moved from Mockable to Dangerous," discussing the carefully orchestrated public freakout over the -- all together now -- "forty trillion government debt." Over on Verdict, I have now followed up with a two-part column, "Questions About Federal Debt Are Serious, but the Wailing and the Gnashing of Teeth over the '$40 Trillion Debt' Are Not" (Part One yesterday and Part Two today). There, I dive into some of the technical details that I was unable to fit into last week's column, and I also discuss the more mundane -- but extremely important -- consequences of increases in borrowing, in particular how public (or private) borrowing can move interest rates and thus exacerbate affordability problems.
Because I hope that many readers will click over and read both parts of that column, I am keeping today's column here a bit shorter than usual. Enjoy!
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Using the now-passé story about Todd Blanche's confirmation as Attorney General of the United States as a starting point, I have recently been thinking about the nature of political violence in this country, with many of those thoughts gathered in yesterday's column. I have hardly been alone, given that political violence is becoming all but impossible to ignore as a real and growing threat.
Professor Dorf, for example, notes in a column earlier this week the very real concern that the upcoming midterm elections could be marred by violence. He describes (and explicitly agrees with) an analysis by Professor Ned Foley, who worries that a pro-Trump "rogue clerk" could refuse to certify the victories by Democratic congressional candidates this November. In that circumstance, legal redress (mandamus) should resolve the matter, but (in Professor Dorf's words) "Professor Foley worries that such a scenario could nonetheless spark a constitutional crisis and political violence reminiscent of (and perhaps even worse than) January 6, 2021."
More generally, at the end of a column two weeks ago, Professor Dorf wrote that, "through his grossly irresponsible statements and behavior (especially the J6 pardons), [Trump] has fostered an environment in which the actuality and threats of political violence have increased." The hot link there leads to a PBS piece from last September, "Analysis: What data shows about political extremist violence," which responded to (among other things) Trump gargoyle Stephen Miller's claim that left-wing political groups constitute "a vast domestic terror movement."
That analysis concludes: "Based on our own research and a review of related work, we can confidently say that most domestic terrorists in the U.S. are politically on the right, and right-wing attacks account for the vast majority of fatalities from domestic terrorism." Which is not to say that there are no violent actors outside of the groups of people who idolize Trump, but as the authors of the PBS analysis write: "[R]esearch shows that the majority of political violence comes from people following right-wing ideologies."
In my two pieces inspired by the Blanche disaster -- "Cowardly Senators and the Specter of Political Violence" last week and "Cultishness, Social Comfort, or Fear of Violence: Why Not All Three?" yesterday -- I wondered whether the three retiring Republican senators who flirted with taking a stand before capitulating to Trump were worried about being personally targeted with retributive political violence (against themselves and possibly their families). In a very odd sense, it would be uncomfortably comforting to imagine that their surrender was based on something that serious, because the only other explanations on offer are (as I described yesterday) their putative worry about being shunned at the country club.
In any event, there is a key difference between fear of violence as a general matter and as a personal matter. Although the January 6 insurrectionists were targeting specific people like Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence, the general mayhem of that situation meant that death would be be nonspecific. That is, no Trump supporter set off to the Capitol that day saying, "I'm going to beat up some policemen and possibly kill some of them," unless they were also saying "or anyone else who stands in our way." Who would die -- if anyone -- was not their concern. And if things go sideways in the upcoming midterms, the thugs will go after "the poll workers" or people (most likely non-White people) standing in line to vote, but again with no specific intent aimed at a person who is identifiable in advance.
By contrast, the kind of fear that those three Senators might have felt or that Pence definitely felt is directed at them personally. Someone is threatening to kill them or their families. (As an aside, this category does not include chickenhawks like Senator Josh Hawley, whose profile in manliness was not in response to anyone going after him by name.) There are people who will threaten to kill specific political actors in an attempt to change their actions and decisions. And as a grim aside, some of those psychopaths would gladly kill their targets even after getting what they wanted.
"I'm going to kill you because ..." or "I'm going to kill you unless ..." is one category. "I'm willing to kill anyone who might stop us, and I don't particularly care if you're one of them or not" is another. Both are politically toxic, and unfortunately both are growing threats, mostly -- again, not entirely, but definitely mostly -- because of the right-wing cult that has taken over US politics. One would hope for voices of reason to step forward, but they too would worry about being targeted. This is why it is sensible to fear for the country's continued stability.