Political Violence is Bad, Actually

This is a portal to a hell-dimension

If the preservation of democracy is important to you, then the attempted assassination of a presidential candidate should be deeply offensive, regardless of your political affiliation.

As a species, we have rule-by-violence in our blood. It’s some of our deepest heritage, that precedes even our humanity. We are descended from people who murdered their political enemies, and were ruled by homicidal strongmen and warlords. The development of societies that have removed violence from how we resolve the question of leadership is one of our greatest achievements, and one that we, forgetful of the state of nature, take utterly for granted.

The introduction of violence into the political arena is a slippery ladder that leads to some of the darkest scenarios imaginable. Spirals into political violence are a real thing that has happened to real nations, filled with people just like you or I. Just ask the Romans, who beat attempted political reformers to death on the floor of the senate, or the people who lived through the French Revolution, the latter of which eventually degenerated into a series of public executions known as the Reign of Terror. Fun!

Let’s be real. It sure looks like after more than eight years of people hyperventilating about how Trump is comparable to Hitler, and a truly gross level of public fantasizing about physically hurting him, someone finally took a shot at him. It makes a certain amount of sense, really, if you thought Trump was LITERALLY Hitler (assuming this implies the same amount of genocide and attempted world domination as the historical Hitler) you should probably shoot him!

Liberals have a really easy time identifying the connection between rhetoric and real-world violence when it comes to say, anti-Asian or anti-Muslim hate crimes, or Sarah Palin’s culpability in the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, or Alex Jones’ role in convincing a nut with a gun to show up at a pizza place in Washington D.C. Something tells me the connection won’t be as obvious to them now. Yes, Republicans are deeply, disgustingly guilty of this as well, but it sure looks like someone tried to shoot their guy first.

Clearly, these sort of heated accusations can have real life consequences. We will learn far more about the motivations of the shooter in the coming days, it’s possible the emerging facts of the case will confound my conclusion here, but it’s looking rather like a moral parable about the boy who cried Hitler. A certain part of the Democratic party just spent the better part of a decade banging pots and pans about how Trump is going to commit genocide and end our democracy. Now someone appears to have acted on that rhetoric, ironically likely sealing the 2024 election in Trump’s favor.

Now for some good news. Four American presidents have been assassinated throughout our history, with three others surviving attempts on their lives. The fact is, we’ve sustained events like this before without dissolving into violence, ever since a mentally ill house painter named Richard Lawrence took a shot at then-President Andrew Jackson in 1835.

The norms of peaceful transition of power, of resisting the urge to murder our political opponents, these things are strong in our culture. It’s in vogue to shit on American institutions of democracy, but the reality is these values and structures have brought us back from the brink of chaos throughout our nearly 250 year history. Let’s hope that even in our current heightened moment, these antiques still work.