Violence And Delusion In American Politics

The second attempt on the life of a former President and current candidate in the course of only a few months has to raise questions about the direction politics in America are headed. The degree of vituperation directed at Trump throughout his political career—2015 to the present—has no parallel since, well, since the last Republican candidate. I guess it’s a sort of tradition on the left, although I do think the degree of hatred is unprecedented since Nixon. Even the hatred directed at Reagan—yeah, he was shot, too—doesn’t quite compare. TAC carried a thoughtful article on the subject a few days ago:

The Second Trump Assassination Attempt Is Another Twist of the Screw

What will it take to stymie American political violence?

The United States has faced political violence before. Abraham Lincoln was slain by Booth, Jack Kennedy by Oswald. There is a historic, unrestrained impulse toward violence that rears itself in our body politic from time to time. That said, I will go out on a limb and say the two attempts on Trump’s life have not only been unprecedented in their brazenness but in the reception and subsequent dissemination on social media.

Sunday’s was the second attempt to murder the one-time democratically elected leader of the nation and the current leader of one of the two major political parties in the United States. It’s worth restating because, amid NFL football and the general relaxation of a Sunday morning, the public response to the shooting was muted. After the televised, dramatic assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, the West Palm Beach plot was met with resignation and dismissal. The idea that Donald Trump is staging attempts on his own life, for example, has become a mainstream view of the American left. Desensitization to nakedly political violence, and by extension tolerance for it, is threatening to become a norm.

True, I think. All of us who were alive back then can remember where they were and so forth when JFK was removed by the Deep State.

How does a nation unravel such a mess? For starters, political leaders in both parties have an obligation to tone down their accusations. The popularly known “baby Hitler dilemma” has come to dominate a vast swath of the Democratic electoral base. The moral dilemma asks whether one would consider murdering an infant Adolph Hitler to prevent the Second World War and Holocaust; the affirmative answer has come to mark the American left’s response to the Trump phenomenon. In a country that once roundly condemned Hank Williams Jr. for invoking Hitler in his discussions of President Barack Obama, painting the 45th president as a Nazi has become vogue for the most influential celebrities, media outlets, and journalists.

If you call someone an existential threat to democracy enough times, vigilantism is a natural result. The Hitlerian rhetoric of those who have engaged in it has not only been irresponsible, but has evolved into a form of modern-day blood libel. American statesmen, if any remain, must cut through the social media-infused insanity of our times and re-orient our national discourse to foster a sustainable consensus.

Second, meaningful steps should be taken to address the self-evident mental health crisis of our times.

Those ideas were echoed by Matt Hoh in conversation with Danny Davis a couple of days ago. Hoh is, as I understand it, some sort of liberal, but he was unsparing in his portrayal of the Left:

DD: I do think that Biden, for all of his rhetoric and stuff, doesn't want to get us into one of these kind of conflicts, so my hope is that he's going to say we're not going to go down this path because, if you had to face the issue of being embarrassed because you quote lost Ukraine or be the president that got us into a nuclear war, I'm thinking you'd want to go with [losing Ukraine].

MH: But when you look at the Ukraine polling numbers--Israel and and Palestine are completely the opposite-- there are a majority of Americans who, depending on how the question is asked, a narrow majority or a plurality still support the Ukraine war. When you look at Democrats you start getting into about the 60% range who still think the Ukraine war is a good idea. You have a majority of Democrats, when asked if being involved in Ukraine war risks a war between the United States and Russia, they agree with that. They think it's okay. A majority of Democrats are in line with that. This Ukraine war, for the Democrats, for the loyalists of the Democrat party, is a key identity issue. This is nothing more than the extension of Russiagate. This is nothing more than what was put forth and propagated in 2016 to explain why Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump--it was because the Russians rigged the elections. They have run on this for almost a decade and this is as deep a commitment among loyalist Democrats as anything. I would dare say it's maybe their most sincere commitment. When the Biden campaign launched its first presidential ad it is of Joe Biden they chose to lead with wartime president defending democracy, Putin, Putin, Trump. That's what their loyalists really believe.

Yeah. And Hillary is still with us and the MSM is giving her a platform to advocate for censorship, despite the fact that she’s the most notorious and cynical political hoaxter in American history. The problem is, of course, as Hoh points out, Dems don’t think the Russia Hoax was a hoax—despite everything. Hillary Clinton, author of the Russian Hoax, decrying propaganda. One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It’s easy to laugh at these delusional people, but there are an awful lot of them.

Glenn Diesen @Glenn_Diesen 

Clinton arguing that those who spread (what the government defines as) propaganda should be criminally charged

- On the same day, Clinton suggested Elon Musk indirectly threatened to tape Taylor Swift

- In 2016, Clinton financed the Steele Dossier and spread the Russiagate hoax

10:31 AM · Sep 17, 2024

Back to Hoh, who pivots to perhaps the most fundamental problem in American politics:

The same calculation. Why is the Harris campaign continuing to support Israel when it's clear that they will actually gain votes in November not just by pushing for a ceasefire -- this has came out in a poll done by the Cato Institute last week -- they will gain votes if they condition or block weapons to Israel. They will actually gain votes on that in the three key swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. And they're not doing it because they'd rather stay in the good graces of AIPAC and the pro Israel Lobby than actually win the election in November.

David Sanger in the New York Times talking about how the United States has changed its nuclear war policy. We now have a policy where we're going to be able to fight three nuclear wars simultaneously, right? God help us! But first of all those people believe that's possible, but also in that article, which is really important, it says that the White House in 2022 estimated the risk of nuclear war in Ukraine at 50/50 and they still pushed on. So if you to believe these people who spoke to David Sanger and what they told him, they were saying the odds of it going nuclear in 2022 is 50/50 but we kept doubling down. So we are strapped into this car while these madmen play chicken. They think they are masters of the universe, they think they're the ones who create history and reality bends to them. And now they're up against people who aren't blinking. People who have said before, if you do this in Georgia, we will do this. If we you do this in Syria, we'll do this. If you do this in Ukraine, we'll do this. So yeah, we're in a very dangerous place.

There’s a new study out that I picked up from Jonathan Turley. The study tries to quantify the “rage” in American society in political terms. Here’s Turley (the link will take you to the study pdf):

Age of Rage: 26 Million Americans Believe Political Violence is Justified

A poll released by the University of Chicago via the Chicago Project on Security and Threats offers a chilling account of the growing radicalism in America, particularly after the second foiled assassination attempt of former president Donald Trump, the poll found that 26 million Americans believe “the use of force” is justified to keep Trump from regaining the presidency.

Perhaps that quantifies the number of hardcore believers in the Russia Hoax? Now to be fair, there are also 18 million who say the use of force to restore Trump to the presidency is legitimate:

Q: The use of force is justified to

restore Trump to the Presidency. 6.9% 8 Million U.S. Adults

prevent Trump from becoming president. 10.0% 26 Million U.S. Adults

The study illustrates the limits of quantification. I’m guessing that a large percentage of the 26 million are hard core Russia Hoaxers. That’s objectively “the moon is green cheese” territory. Strictly delusional. Impervious to rationality. As the liberal Hoh suggests, the Dem support for war in Ukraine, while an imperfect measure, may be a useful proxy for judging where these people are coming from. Are the 18 million Trump supporters operating at anything like that level of delusion? The numbers alone don’t tell us. At a guess, these are most likely people who are very exercised on specific issues—like the abortion enthusiasts on the Left—but also people who are election fairness doubters. That’s not a delusional position like the Russia Hoax is, since there are international organizations that rank countries according to election integrity—and the US finishes below Mexico.

Whatever, it’s where we are.