Special: Why This Age Of Political Violence Is Different
I swear I'm usually not an alarmist
“The martyrs of history were not fools.” - Ronald Reagan
For a long time, it had remained entirely unclear to me how in the 1960s, our nation, hurling towards barbarism, had avoided Civil War or something adjacent. What forces precluded our potential demise? Are they around today?
After all, lynchings and fire bombs were common. The country was teeming with racial violence that resulted in the murders of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, and Martin Luther King Jr, among others. Two Kennedys, both of whom promised togetherness and the deliverance of equality, were assassinated only five years apart. If you are making a list of the most consequential figures in American History, several of them met their demise during such a turbulent time.
What makes this new era of political violence different from that of the Sixties? Are there any differences at all and if so, what can they illuminate about the direction of the nation?
Most intriguing about the assassinations of the Sixties is their lack of ideological cohesion. Some of them, but not all, fall neatly into buckets, while others do nothing to reflect the social zeitgeist.
Evers and King were murdered by White Supremacists scared of racial change. Malcolm X’s death was the result of Afro-Islamic infighting, although perhaps spurred on by the FBI, while Fred Hampton’s murder assuredly was.
An anti-Zionist lunatic shot Bobby Kennedy, showing no motivational linkage to his brother’s assassination. Whether or not the elder Kennedy was killed by a group of conspirators or a lone gunman is still up for debate, but Lee Harvey Oswald’s rationale is frustratingly unclear. Even George Wallace’s would-be assassin best explained his drive to kill by a need to be famous.
The lack of connection between such violence is unnerving. Like all humans, for comfort’s sake, I seek data points to establish a singular narrative of the instability around me. It would make sense if all of these assassinations were done by savage racists who selected targets they deemed a danger to their way of life. But these murders do more to dispel that narrative than solidify it.
It is clear that the political violence of the Sixties - which included more than assassinations, such as setting fire to Malcolm X’s home and bombings from The Weather Underground - was more mechanism than movement. They were a means of expression, not necessarily the expression itself.
But this is changing. And it won’t be good. Why?
“The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent & respectable Stranger, but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations and Religions” - George Washington
Still there remains some constants between the 1960s and today. The United States has always maintained interpersonal dynamics ripe for fostering violence. In the broadest sense, the main characters of America’s Sociopolitical History can be divided into three distinct groups:
1. Those having something
2. Those having something and expanding it to others
3. Those wanting something
Our most pivotal moments as a nation often revolve around those three factions, albeit not always neatly. America’s founding proudly featured Group 1 (Royalists with privilege), Group 2 (educated elites with the means to design an equitable, independent nation) and Group 3 (less fortunate yeoman longing for said privileges and liberties.)
The Mexican-American war, whose intent was to conquer land - from a flawed yet democratic nation, nonetheless - displayed much of the same. America doubled in size because men owning both land and slaves wanted to give that same privilege to men wanting the same, so they took it from the Mexicans already possessing it. Employing coded religious language to justify the war was merely a feel-good disguise for the war’s socioeconomic purpose.
The Civil War is a more clear-cut example. Southern Whites had the advantage of deploying their enumerated rights to seize the American Dream. Northern Abolitionists had the same ability and wanted to expand it to slaves. Slaves wanted it.
The Spanish-American war was a battle for those wanting a strategic, geopolitical stronghold. The 19th Amendment battle is self-explainable, as is the push to end Jim Crow. World Wars I and II followed along the same path yet on an international stage and of course, the Civil Right Movement aligns snugly with these dynamics as well.
Indeed, when disentangled, the dominating narrative between 1963 and 1981 - a time bookended by the murder of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan’s near death - reveals more of the same.
There was an elite group of political operatives who hoarded power and therefore the seismic impacts that resulted from it. They used it to battle racial equality at home, and communism abroad. By realizing then actualizing the power of mass protests, a mixture of working class populists and educated progressives pushed back, advocating for anti-corruption laws, the withdrawal from Vietnam, open primaries, racial and gender equality, etc. Consequently, they wanted to guarantee those rights and protections to those who did not have them - Blacks, draftees, and reformist legislators stomped out by political duopolists and corporatists who funded them.
Admittedly, this is an interpretation of history that edges upon a Marxist school of thought I do not wholly subscribe to, but I fully endorse viewing history through the lens of those possessing the means to ensure a stable life and those wanting those means. Encompassed within this power is the ability to be financially, culturally and personally secure. It is a linchpin for peace, making ownership of power an intoxicating aroma we can’t help but breathe in.
Today, our nation is proving this interpretation true. However, it now falls upon tribal lines which, when zoomed in on, reveal specific identities for our three groups. Exploring these groups does much to eludicate the current chaos we find ourselves in. I’ve named them like so:
Hoarders of the American Life
Advocates for it
Those desiring it
“It is this state of affairs which is among the most potent causes for the current world-wide rebellious unrest.” - Hannah Arendt
Those thinking we’ve just entered a new age of political violence are wrong. We’ve been here. Below, an incomplete list of attempts, acts and rhetoric from the last 10 years:
An assailant breaks into Congresswoman Pelosi’s home asking “Where’s Nancy” and then proceeds to beat her husband over the head with a hammer.
Donald Trump Jr subsequently posts a photo with a hammer to show what his Halloween costume would be.
A left-wing extremist shoots legislator Steve Scalise at a Congressional baseball game.
A domestic terrorist group builds a fake house to practice kidnapping Liberal Governor Gretchen Whitmer. They are raided, arrested and tried.
Congressman Paul Gosar releases an anime video depicting himself killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Thousands of Pro-Trumpers march on the Capitol building with zip ties, weapons, and a gallow demanding the election be overturned. Pipe bombs are found on the premises.
Rudy Giuliani suggested “trial by combat” that same day.
Kathy Griffin poses with a severed head resembling Donald Trump.
Mark Robinson, GOP gubernatorial candidate for North Carolina, asserts that “some folks need killing” when referring to unspecified political opponents.
Mass shooters in Buffalo and Colorado Springs are proven inspired by violent political ideology.
Anderson Lee Aldrich, the Colorado shooter, ran a Neo-Nazi website.
Payton Gendron, the Buffalo shooter, wrote a manifesto describing the dangers of The Great Replacement Theory.
The attempted assassination of Trump is not a harbinger of times to come as much as it is a reflection of the time we’re already in. It was only a matter of time until something this severe happened. My task now isn’t to tell what gave birth to this new age; it it to detail the proverbial parents it was born into. What environment allows this current era to grow and thrive?
The Hoarders
One side of the political aisle clings to a nostalgic American life that may have never existed at all. They perceive this nation the way it has been presented in the insouciant films we’ve come to love. The Sandlot Effect, if you will; a nation where children, mostly white or white-passing can spend their days coming together to overcome an obstacle while ogling some women and celebrating the 4th along the way.
Things in this fictionalized world are what they want America to be like. Crime is out of sight. Mothers stay home while the father works. Neighborhoods are monoethnic. The language is English. Mythical patriots serve as heroes. Shit, there’s even baseball, big dogs and the age-old American concept that anything is achievable if you have the gumption to act on your dreams. The only thing missing is a Sunday service where apple pie is dished out afterw communion.
But what are they hoarding, specifically? These voters keep tight within their grips not just the American Dream, but the ability to determine what it is and how you can earn it. They’re increasingly clutching to a nation they feel at home in; a country where boys are boys and date girls who are girls. It is where Judeo-Christian values inform ethical decisions. Where non-whites are accepted but not embraced, but only if they enter gradually and legally with the tacit agreement that they will occupy our lowest caste unless they can invent a new app or throw a tight spiral.
They’re guarding the capacities of our Constitution and founding tenets, while perceiving those beneath them as deservedly being there and those above them as having cheated their way to the top. They are the possessors, at least in part, and they believe their most cherished treasure is under siege. They’ve done more than become gatekeepers of an American promise which belongs to all mankind, they’ve moved on to justifying their ownership.
The Advocates
In the other half of the balance sheet lives those who have identified poor souls lacking access to America’s promise. They push, loudly and through legal mechanisms, to rectify social injustices, along the way de-monopolizing the hoarders’ control of national norms. Their worldview holds that folks not traditionally represented in politics - gays, the transgendered, undocumented immigrants, the neurodivergent - have unjust barriers in their journey to achieving this dream.
Not only are they finding it disproportionately difficult to access the upward mobility embedded in our Horatian myths, their applications for native acceptance are only greeted by middle fingers and blatant discrimination.
Interestingly, advocates believe in an American dream the same way hoarders do. What differentiates the two groups is the willingness to let non-natives and other outsiders earn this life through both merit and earnest attempts at social cohesion. Indeed, advocates so firmly adhere to the concept of equality that they’re willing to fight on behalf of those with tougher means to it.
This puts the tension between our two main tribal factions into a tidy box. Hoarders are consistently recognizing their country less and less, griping that an invasion of blue-haired pronouns and their Spanish-speaking comrades are diluting the culture that makes their America…America.
The advocate views American culture as an elastic, malleable entity. As long as they reflect the nation’s bedrock principles of equality, liberty, and respect for differences, then anyone who diverges from the hoarder demographic should be shown empathy. One group perceives this as an assault to the nation, the other, a sign of just how intoxicating its ideals are. Indeed, it is why advocates embraced Hillary Clinton’s campaign slogan, “Stronger Together.”
Senator Chris Murphy summed up these two groups poignantly: “But in a culture of isolation - where people feel alone and angry and powerless - and a culture of scarcity - where everyone has to climb over others to succeed - people start to get desperate. They will do anything to win.”
While that describes the hoarders, his call to “build stronger communities and institutions - where people find connection and meaning” portrays the advocates.
The Desirers
Hoarders love perhaps nothing more than boasting in precise details the virtues that form American Exceptionalism: meritocratic rise, strong national and local defense, access to employment, swift innovation, freedom of religion, and communal bond. These notions constitute their belief that America isn’t merely a great nation, but the greatest of all. For what it’s worth, polling shows that advocates harbor a more cynical view, albeit one that hasn’t fully abandoned love for country.
It is these pathways to stability and hope that attracts desirers, hence their name. One part of this group is compiled of foreigners, those reeling from vulnerabilities both physical and financial. Imagine a Honduran mother wanting to flee from one of the world’s highest murder rates, a Guatemalan household eying the promise of a nation offering steady income, or a Sinaloan fleeing cartel violence.
Desirers can also be native borns. In an age where both parties engage in identity politics, they find themselves underrepresented. These are gay folks, trans folks, those with autism or the generally less-abled, both physically and mentally. It can also include minorities who continue to be the target of inequity, such as Black folks with traditionally nonwhite names who need to send out 15 resumes before receiving a callback, as compared to the 10 resumes white-sounding names have to submit.
This group only wants to fit in with American society and have access to the very values our hoarders hold in such high esteem. Immigrants have heard Trump’s demand that “You have to speak English” and met that call. In attempts to gain social acceptance, they’ve dedicated more time to mastering our language while also imploring legislators to fix the shortage of ESL classes for adults. What’s more, they embrace the most taxing, most menial, low-paying jobs that native borns overwhelmingly do not want. To boot, the economic consensus is that immigrants documented or not do not do anything to lower wages for native folks.
There are systems at work, either legal or cultural, that put desirers at a disadvantage when applying for American acceptance. For instance, a 2023 Gallup poll found only 41 percent of Republicans supported same-sex marriage. Pew found that 37 percent of Republicans believe racial equality efforts have gone too far. In 2019, Trump outlawed those with gender dysphoria from making the ultimate attempt at assimilation, joining the military.
“When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.” - George Eliot
The dynamics have been explained. But what role do Hoarders, Advocates and Desirers play in this age of political violence? The rhetoric and actions of hoarders have taken an apocalyptic turn. They increasingly claim a religious background which does more to confirm their zeal than it does their desire to emit Christlike attributes.
This isn’t a condemnation of American Christianity. I have many dear friends who worship faithfully and lend their charitable efforts to anyone in need, regardless of identity. My intent isn’t too offend, but to truthfully convey a linkage between mostly rural religiosity and violence in the name of nationalism; something serious scholars have been communicating for decades now. The scholarship is as irreproachable as it is difficult to reconcile, especially for the faithful.
That being said, one in three White Evangelicals, according to the Public Religion Research Institute, believe “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” 80 percent of the same demographic believes that “advocating for the rights of transgender people have gone too far” and 74 percent support “installing dangerous physical deterrents” at the border. Undeniably, today’s hoarders are exceedingly Christian and they perceive their homeland to be descending into an unrecognizable, immoral wasteland.
Irrationally, White Evangelicals are literally the only polled religious denomination that believes Christians are facing more discrimination that Muslims in America, despite their political savior’s long history or demonizing Barack Obama by claiming he practices Islam, or his Muslim Ban executive order.
White Evangelicals are also the only denomination to support the ability for businesses to refuse serving gay folks. Out of all polled affiliations, they again were the only one where less than a majority believe homosexuals face a lot of discrimination today. Indeed, Robert Jeffress, head pastor for perhaps the largest Baptist church in the nation with over 16,000 members, expressed this sentiment perfectly. Evangelicals - the hoarders - believe they are, “under siege” and they need a warrior to save them.
This corresponds well with the messianism of Donald J. Trump. In his new book, journalist Tim Alberta relays a conversation with pastor Chris Winans, whose congregation underwent an exodus after he called on churchgoers to protect the planet their God created. His comments seemingly wandered too far into the political debate of Climate Change. Heeding Governor Whitmer’s orders to stop in-person services, along with some comments calling for compassion towards George Floyd, nearly resulted in Winans surrendering his job.
Alberta, whose devout father tutored Winans before handing the job to him, asked him a simple question. “What’s wrong with American Evangelicals?” He responded, “Too many of them worship America.”
These are our hoarders. They’ve determined that Judgment Day is upon them, with 63 percent of Evangelicals, according to Pew, presumably interpreting our culture wars as a sign that “we’re living in the end times.” With the stakes so high, it becomes markedly clear why they are supporting political violence to maintain their way of life.
The advocates are trying their damndest to fight back through civil and legal avenues. They see through the facade that Roe v. Wade was overturned as an issue of State’s Rights, interpreting the decision as one inspired by religious extremists, which recent reporting determined to likely be true. They understand the overlap between rural America and religious America, and how they’ve established new norms to limit the ways in which our LGBTQ and non-white demographics can shape their culture.
The desirers are hanging on as much as they can, dependent upon empathetic souls to prevent what the next presidential administration could bring: mass deportations, a national abortion ban, and the codification of Judeo-Christian values into American law.
“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.” - Robert Kennedy
We have less of those men now, Mr. Kennedy. It is why today’s era of political violence will be different than those of times past. Previous generations were led by flawed figures driven by American instincts to uphold our founding principles.
Lyndon B. Johnson was no stranger to using the n-word. Indeed, one biographer detailed how Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court because “when I appoint a [deleted] to the bench, I want everybody to know he’s a [deleted]."
Johnson, and other figures with discriminatory histories, were compelled by political violence to do what was right. They acted as advocates in spite of their reactionary yearnings, and in doing so used the chaos of their era to expand the American Promise to those who were placed in the social crosshairs.
But these instincts are only found in half our nation today. Since Trump’s assassination attempt, Democratic leaders from the top-down have not only called for an end to such violence, but offered guidance on how we can return to normal. Only one half of the nation’s political class is willing to unite in the name of safety, the name of democracy. Unfortunately, like tangoing, it takes two.
Consider Trump’s 2024 Vice Presidential pick, Ohio senator JD Vance. As author of the biographical Hillbilly Elegy, Vance has on his brain imprinted the faces of have-nots forgotten by D.C elites. His rise to fame and by extension, political office, revolves around a core tenet that he could be a voice for the overlooked dowtrodden of Appalachia.
While an advocate for those folks, Vance, only a handful of years ago, divulged to his roomate his thoughts on Trump, claiming the 45th president was “the fruit of the party’s collective neglect.” Clearly, Vance initially believed the former president a hoarder of America’s Promise, not someone who could dispense it to the underprivileged.
But it is what Vance continued to text that fully embodies the potential horror of this era: “I go back and forth between thinking Trump might be a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he might be America’s Hitler.”
Only a few short years later, Vance wrote the following tweet in response to Trump’s near assassination:
It isn’t too important to know how Vance converted from a Never-Trumper to a sycophant. That’s easy. Like millions of others, he got swept up in a current of nationalism that promised to deposit him into a Shining Sea of Nostalgia, where fellow in-groupers can revel in the comfort of monoculture and secured status. Oh, and perhaps he’s a brilliant Yale grad who saw a route to power via Republicans, who, in Vance’s words, are “lower-education white people.”
Moreover, Vance has recently been heavily influenced by The Religious Right. ProPublica unearthed a speech from 2021 where Vance declares “the devil is real and that he works terrible things in our society.” Such rhetoric is now commonplace amongst fervent doomsdayers presaging that not only is our end near, but it takes the form of anti-Americans controlled by Satan himself.
But more important is the version of Vance he left behind; the person before the metamorphosis. We know, definitively, that during Trump’s initial ascension Vance would have pushed back against the president’s violent rhetoric. A 2016 tweet that he has since deleted is more than proof:
Additionally, when Trump defended the White Supremacists who murdered a peaceful protester in Charlottesville, Vance, in the role of advocate, skewered Trump by writing “There is no moral equivalence between the anti-racist protestors in Charlottesville and the killer (and his ilk).”
Today, he has completed his transition from the guarantor of the American Dream to a gatekeeper of it. It was going to be people like him who protected against a new age of violence. He was supposed to be one party’s calming, rational voice who united with a counterpart from the other party to deescalate the nation. Out of it could have been born transformational legislation that serves all Americans and entrenches desirers further into cohesion, thereby pulling us out of this era. Instead, we’ve lost his moral agency to the jingoistic siren song of Donald Trump.
Where Lyndon Johnson was compelled by political violence to right the ship, Vance is garrisoning it to achieve his cultural agenda, conveniently forsaking LBJ as an example of how to avoid Civil War.
Johnson conveyed how political violence debased the American Dream, thereby transforming it from a social disruptor to an agent for positive change. Despite being lodged in an explosive racial upheaval not seen since a century prior, our cultural instincts were to denounce these assassinations then honor them by Americanizing our martyrs’ following. They served as a reminder of what America could be - a fearless community who interprets violence as the most dire sign that change is needed, and needed now, for the sake of all Americans.
Currently, this violence isn’t being taken as a sign at all. It’s seen more as opportunity. It’s being deployed to confirm the dystopian future hoarders have been prophesying. And this image of the American Life is so overpowering, so captivating that the voices we need to bring tranquility have been quelled into silence, or worse, exile.
No matter how many platitudes the hoarders now spew in public, they can’t bring peace. Because peace requires part truth, part reconciliation. They lack both, which makes sense, when considering they believe the fight to retain their culture is, in the words of Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green, “a battle between good and evil.” They can save some Americans from this era, but only the ones they deem worthy.
Two months before his death, Robert Kennedy gave one of the most remarkable speeches in modern history. Addressing the Cleveland City Club in April of 1968, Kennedy took to the podium to comment on “this mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.”
Kennedy encouraged all Americans, not just the racists, sexists and xenophobes to see those being othered as wanting “nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can” like all citizens do. He was the ultimate advocate for the desirers.
But I now find myself recalling his final words, uttered only a few weeks later. They were brought into historical record by Mexican immigrant Juan Romero, an 18-year-old busboy who grabbed Kennedy’s hand after he was shot.
While cradling his bleeding head, Romero heard Kennedy ask “Is everybody okay?” Romero answered yes, to which Kennedy responded “Everything will be okay.”
If you want to know which direction the nation is heading in, compare these words to how Trump reacted to be shot at. Instead of seeking self-preservation or the wellbeing of his supporters, he, virulently, shouted “Fight…fight!”
There is a question every journalist should be asking the former president.
Fight who, exactly?