Political Violence Became Normal Right Before Our Eyes

America is losing its mind. A man accused of killing a former Wisconsin judge reportedly had a hit list that included Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Meanwhile, an armed California man traveled to Washington, D.C., with the goal of killing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

And that’s just this week. We have apparently become so inured to this sort of thing that a news report on the guy who allegedly wanted to kill Kavanaugh barely made the front page of The New York Times.

Talk all you want about guns, but America also has some deep-seated spiritual, psychological, and cultural problems. And while senseless violence is one of them, we are increasingly seeing the rise of political violence where the perpetrators' motives are clear and coherent.

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The Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol was about stopping the certification of the 2020 election. Rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” to intimidate the vice president into not certifying the election. They might have been delusional, but they had a plan. Similarly, the foiled threat on Kavanaugh’s life was aimed at derailing democracy—at preempting and reversing the Supreme Court’s pending Dobbs decision on abortion. It’s not absurd to think it might have worked.

As was the case with Jan. 6, political actors helped create an environment that was hospitable to violence. Donald Trump’s involvement in assembling and inciting the mob is obvious and well-documented.

Similarly, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s careless rhetoric back in 2020 (“I want to tell you, Gorsuch; I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions”) did nothing to quell the spirit of violence. Indeed, Schumer’s comments prompted Chief Justice John Roberts to issue a statement saying that “threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous.”

Schumer was not the only prominent voice on the left who made dangerous and irresponsible comments. For example, lots of progressives with verified Twitter accounts tweeted calls for people to “go to the streets” and to “burn it down.”

Vox senior correspondent Ian Millhiser tweeted that he was glad the Dobbs draft leaked “because this leak will foster anger and distrust within the irredeemable institution that is the Supreme Court of the United States.” He then added: “Seriously, shout out to whoever the hero was within the Supreme Court who said ‘f--k it! Let’s burn this place down.’”

So much for returning to norms and institutions in the post-Trump era.

Contra Millhiser, however, whoever leaked the Dobbs draft decision (which suggested that Roe v. Wade is about to be overturned) is no hero. Indeed, the intended result was to pressure the justices to think twice. The same goes for the pro-choice group that publicized the addresses of justices, as well as protesters who demonstrated outside the homes of justices.

The problem with irresponsible rhetoric is that ideas have consequences. Modern America is full of lonely and disconnected individuals who crave attention and self-actualization. (The man who allegedly wanted to kill Kavanaugh said he wanted “to give his life a purpose.”)

Absent the moderating influences of faith, family, and community—politics and the thirst for glory increasingly fill the empty holes in our lives.

True believers who drink the Kool-Aid—or simply harbor delusions of grandeur—believe they can change the world and make a name for themselves, almost instantly.

Over just the past few years, we’ve witnessed a shooting at the Christian conservative Family Research Council—a group that opposes gay marriage and abortion, by a man who said he intended to intimidate “the people who work in that building.” A few years later, we saw a Bernie Sanders-loving and Trump-hating gunman try to assassinate Republicans on a softball field. America heard then-President Donald Trump tell the Proud Boys—who are at best a violent street gang with political aims, if not a full-fledged neo-fascist militia—to “stand back and stand by.” We watched as a New York Times reporter told us that looting and destroying property do not constitute “violence” (although, others on the left tell us that silence is violence). And who can forget the Republican National Committee telling us that what happened on Jan. 6 was “legitimate political discourse”?

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As a result, we have slowly bled away the norm that “violence is wrong” and that “political violence is dangerous to democracy.”

In recent years, there has also been a lot of talk about America possibly having another civil war. One wonders how a modern civil war might look. Red America and Blue America are not evenly divided along state lines. But as the writer Matt Yglesias suggests, “A wave of political assassinations would be pretty bad and seems much more plausible than a ‘civil war’ or what have you.”

What is amazing is how close we have already come to this. The congressional softball shooting could have been a massacre. Jan. 6 could have turned out much worse. Mike Pence and/or other elected officials—might well have been harmed or killed. Likewise, there’s no telling how close we came to having a Supreme Court justice assassinated this week.

Between the access to weapons, the irresponsible rhetoric bandied about by our elites, and the sense that our adversaries are irredeemable enemies, what is amazing is that we have dodged these bullets for this long.

It can’t last forever. If we’re not careful, our luck will eventually run out. I don’t want to think about what happens next.

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