This
political violence is different from the Weathermen–Patty Hearst iteration back
in the ’70s. Today, one of our two political parties abets it. That isn’t going
to change, and it’s almost certain to get worse. That will lead to more acts of
violence on the other side, and eventually … Libya, here we come.
America Is at a Terrifying Turning
Point—and There’s No Going Back
Why the events of this past weekend
should worry everyone who wants a peaceful democracy
Saturday
was a surreal day in American politics, in ways simultaneously horrifying and
heartening. The horrifying part was the news we all woke up to about the
political assassinations (both
attempted and consummated) in Minnesota. The heartening was the millions who
showed up for the nationwide No Kings marches,
which probably made June 14, 2025, the largest single day of political protest
in American history. Somewhere in between was Donald Trump’s poorly attended military
parade, which turned out to be more troubling in conception than execution, but
which nevertheless did not rest comfortably, to put it mildly, within the
tradition of the military not being exploited by presidents for political
purposes.
Add
them all up, though, and throw in the manhandling late last week of a
United States senator and the sneering reaction to it on the
right, and you can’t help but feel that the country is coming further apart and
lurching toward a state of violence—specifically political violence—not seen
here since the 1970s.
There’s
a difference, though, between the violence of that era and today’s, and it’s an
important one to understand. Back then, it felt aberrational and temporary;
like America was going through a generational convulsion over some specific
issues (civil rights, Vietnam) and that matters would somehow sort themselves
out in time. Now? It feels like it’s getting worse by the year and it’s here to
stay—that political violence will just be a feature of American life, sort of
like, oh, Libya.
I
did not choose Libya entirely at random. ACLED, which stands for Armed Conflict Location
and Event Data, is an international group that “collects information on the
dates, actors, locations, fatalities, and types of all reported political
violence and protest events around the world.” Sunday, I had a look at the
ACLED Conflict Index issued in July 2023. As you can see from this map, it places the world’s nations in four
categories of political violence: extreme, high, turbulent, and low/inactive.
Ten
countries occupy the “extreme” category. Twenty are in the “high” group, and
another 20 are marked as “turbulent.” These 50 countries, ACLED says, account
for 97 percent of all political violence in the world.
The
United States is fiftieth—right behind Libya at 49. Now, for some context, I
should note that some countries that rank well below the United States are
hardly paradises on earth. China, for example, ranks sixty-ninth—not,
presumably, because everyone is tickled to live there but because even
theoretical attempts at violence against the state are suppressed by the regime
in so many ways, like the infamous requirement that
Uyghurs register with the local authorities the existence in their homes of
kitchen knives.
Still—50
ain’t where we wanna be, folks.
If
this isn’t persuasive to you, then let’s look at the matter from the other
direction—that is, from the degree of peacefulness that exists in a given
country. A group called Vision of Humanity produces a yearly report called the
Global Peace Index, which, according to their website, takes into account
“23 quantitative and qualitative indicators” and gives the nations of the world
a score from one to five, lower being more peaceful.
The
top ones on the 2024 index are roughly what you’d expect. Iceland at 1.112,
Austria at 1.313, New Zealand at 1.323, and so on (Singapore is up there,
indicating, again, that nation-states have different ways of maintaining the
peace).
The
United States? We rank 132nd, just behind Brazil and ahead of Iran and Lebanon.
We did fare better on the group’s 2022 Positive Peace Index,
which measures societal resilience; we tied with Spain for twenty-sixth. That’s
not embarrassing, although one could easily argue that, for the country that is
by far the world’s richest nation, which should have many billions to invest in
such resiliency in the form of various social supports, 26 isn’t so hot.
All
of these reports, as you may have noticed, are from before Trump’s return to
the White House. It’s pretty hard to imagine next year’s numbers will show an
improvement.
Is
there violence on “both sides”? Sure there is. Some of the recent violence
against Jews, like the Molotov cocktail attack in Boulder and the shooting of
that Israeli couple in Washington, D.C., was perpetrated by people who were
acting on behalf of a cause associated with the left. These attacks were
repulsive on every level, and we need to call them what they were.
But
I had to laugh darkly Saturday evening as I saw many conservatives on social
media, prominent and not, try to locate an aha! moment in the
fact that Vance Boelter, the Minnesota suspect, was appointed to a state
advisory board by two Democratic governors. Please. He was targeting abortion
providers. His neighbor said he was a Trump voter.
As
for violence at the No Kings marches—there was a little. But the most notable
instance was the man driving his car into a group of
anti-Trump protesters in Culpeper, Virginia. Gee, I seem to
remember another man in Virginia who drove his car into a phalanx of
protesters, killing one of them. Which side was he on again?
“The
left,” very broadly defined, engages in some acts of violence. Sure. But
America’s culture of violence is driven by the right. And here’s the important
point. This broadly defined “left” includes people and groups that despise the
Democratic Party as much as or even more than they do Republicans. Antifa
activists weren’t racing to the polls to vote for Kamala Harris, I assure you.
Whereas on the right, the extremists worship Trump. He is their avenger. No
Democratic presidential candidate would welcome the support of violent
extremist groups (not that they would even offer it). Trump has. Repeatedly.
They were at the U.S. Capitol for him on January 6, 2021, ready to administer a
little street justice to his vice president in his name and in order to keep
him in office illegally.
And
that is why this political violence is different from the Weathermen–Patty
Hearst iteration back in the ’70s. Today, one of our two political parties
abets it. That isn’t going to change, and it’s almost certain to get worse.
That will lead to more acts of violence on the other side, and eventually …
Libya, here we come.
