How can we stop the madness taking over America's politics?
A surge of violent threats against leaders should be a wakeup call for all Americans
Donald Trump is back at it again, saying in a post on his Truth Social online media venture that Senate Republican Mitch McConnell has a “DEATH WISH” for working with Democrats to pass legislation.
In typical Trump fashion, the two words were in ALL CAPS for emphasis. He also threw in a racist jibe about McConnell’s Asian American wife, Elaine Chao, who served as Trump’s transportation secretary.
In typical GOP fashion, most top Republican Party officials refused to condemn the remarks, even when given the opportunity to do so, including Florida Senator Rick Scott, who runs the GOP Senate’s campaign organization.
Mainstream commentators like the Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty and the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board condemned Trump’s latest outrage, but they don’t have to worry about getting the approval of Republican voters who are still in the thrall of Trumpism weeks before midterm elections.
Some might try to just brush off these latest Trump remarks, but it’s important to remember this is the guy who helped incite the biggest attack on U.S. Congress in centuries, an assault that came close to killing Trump’s own vice president. Plus, hints at threats of violence come at a sensitive juncture in America’s democracy.
America has been sharply divided along partisan lines for years, with worrisome signs that these bitter splits could turn violent:
Violent threats against members of U.S. Congress increased more than tenfold since 2017 to 9,625 recorded cases in 2021, according to the Capitol Police, the federal law enforcement department in charge of protecting Congress.
In the first three months of 2022, Capitol Police investigated 1,820 cases of threats against members of Congress, and many expect threats to surge as the midterm elections approach.
The January 6th attacks on Congress nearly two years ago have left a mark on America’s democracy. Before that stunning incident, a few high-profile attacks including the 2017 shooting of Representative Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana), the House’s third ranking Republican, and the 2011 shooting of former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona) had already raised concerns about political violence. So have plots such as the one to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020.
Nearly two thirds of Americans (64%) believe that the United States will see an increase in political violence over the next few years, a figure that has risen over the past 18 months.
These signs and trends don’t necessarily mean that the United States is heading towards another civil war. Things have been just as bad if not worse in the past, as when the FBI recorded 2,500 bombings during an eighteen month period in 1971 and 1972. But they represent a major warning sign about the health of America’s society and political system.
Something’s happening here… but why?
Given our polarized political environment, it’s easy for one side to point the finger at the other for this dysfunctional and dangerous landscape. Top law enforcement officials have warned about the terrorist threats from right-wing extremism for years, including during the Trump era. But there are multiple factors at play including:
1. A decline in how public discourse and culture value human life and support the common good. America continues to see record gun violence, and combined with the opioid epidemic, the death toll is met with little more than short-term shoulder shrugs and societal signs of resignation, as if we’re all just saying, “that’s just the way it is.”
2. The dominant media and social cultures in America incentivize division and fragmentation. Americans seem incapable of truly seeing each other across ideological and partisan divides. These extreme divisions saturate our culture and motivate fringe elements to turn to other means including violence to advance their agendas, especially when it seems like the system isn’t working.
3. Some of the most active and passionate voices in politics today seem more interested in scoring points and appealing to narrow constituencies more than they are interested in getting results for the common good. The country has a catharsis culture problem, one in which emotions cloud and crowd out debate and efforts to build consensus.
4. All of this contributes to a rising disaffection with mainstream politics. An increasing number of Americans don’t trust either Democrats or Republicans on tackling the major issues facing the country. There is also a growing sense among ordinary Americans that their leaders are ideological extremists. Some decide to disengage and drop out of political life, while the more passionate voices pull the country even further toward extremes. When mainstream politics collapses at the center, extremist fringes move in to fill the vacuum.
These broader political and cultural factors feed into and shape the current environment in which many individuals and even political movements turn to violent extremism to advance their agendas and start targeting political leaders.
No easy solutions
The Capitol Police and other law enforcement agencies have stepped up their efforts to protect political figures, but it’s hardly enough given the tidal way of social and political forces they are swimming against right now. A bigger shift in America’s political culture will take years, and it requires steps on several fronts.
1. Support efforts that boost public safety and security for all. The sharp increase in crime and violence overall contributes to and feeds off of the political divisions today. Yet most Americans are deeply concerned about ways to increase public safety and expand overall security in a way that defends individuals’ freedom. Leaders play an important role in this, and when they fail to strongly condemn acts and threats of violence, they are making the problem worse.
2. Promote a “live and let live” culture in America. We all need to do a better job at understanding and accepting alternative views, and most Americans want to see their government and politics to respect their rights as individuals, even if it doesn’t seem that way when we hear certain positions from leading political voices and the two main parties. There is a strong impulse for a “leave people alone” movement. This attitude shift won’t stop the slide towards greater political violence and extremism, but it can help shift the tone.
3. Learn from the perspectives of others who don’t share your views. One key part of being a good citizen is trying to see the world through the eyes of others. It won’t solve all of the problems but listening to views of those with whom you disagree is a key part of a healthy democracy – and there’s definitely a sense that America has lost the ability to do this in recent years.
4. Offer a more inclusive national narrative. Political figures on both sides of the aisle more often than not operate with a “divide and conquer” template, instead of trying to build broader and more inclusive coalitions. An important reason why this politics of division is the default of political leaders is the absence of a cohesive national narrative, a shared story that can help unify and rally people around a common cause.
The most disturbing aspect of the present moment remains the way in which political leaders, especially former President Trump, have themselves not-so-subtly threatened violence if they don’t get their way.
That’s what separates the current moment from the past and makes it much more dangerous: instead of terrorists setting off bombs and murdering innocents, it’s the de facto head of one of the nation’s two major political parties doling out threats like a mafia don. I’ve seen this movie before over the years in parts of the Middle East, and it does not end well.
Just as it took us a long time to reach this alarming point, it’ll take time and effort to dig ourselves out of it.