norms and abnorms
startling survey data
As I have noted more than once, the depth of knowledge, determination and energy among the readers of Actions Create Consequences is so thankfully vast. People yearn to provide solutions rather than merely whine about problems. Part of what encourages me about our society is that, regardless of our national nuttiness too often, those committed to participatory governance bucks us up much of the time.
Not always, as today will indicate because protecting our system requires knowing what it confronts. Our system, our civic culture, and our cherished country are under threat. I mentioned Professor Emeritus Wayne Selcher’s work several weeks ago as he has been such a valuable colleague throughout my career, particularly when I was immersed in Latin Americana decades ago. In his retirement from Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, Wayne serves as a translator for what is going on.
Because we see ourselves as an exceptional country, a good neighbor (although that one mystifies me when it comes to our relations with many in Mexico or Canada because we say things that are anything but neighborly), and a fundamentally good people. Sometimes, such as on humanitarian aid in a crisis, we bloody well are amazing about helping others. When it comes to considering the motivations of those we see as “different”, however, the story isn’t quite so positive. However, that isn’t really my topic this Sunday morn.
Wayne reminded me after one of my newsletters of something vaguely worrying, but he provides ample evidence we should really be taking this deadly seriously: violence lurks on the right and left following the election on 5 November. He cited three items, including a piece in Wednesday’s Guardian about the mix of violence, some strains of religious fervor, and rightwing politics.
I suspect, though don’t have data to prove it, that anyone advocating political violence would claim she or he has no alternative because the system is biased and no other remedies exist. I find that absurd but we hear often in interviews across media outlets.
For me, this became a real issue during my final year as Dean of Faculty and Academic Programs at the National War College. Truth be told, it was a factor that led me to step down but only one of several (and I did serve subsequently as National Defense University Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs so don’t assume I fled immediately). The incident indicating to me we had a huge problem ahead resulted from reactions to the 6 January insurrection.
On a faculty zoom call six days after the insurrection, I realized the chasm swallowing up colleagiality and trust among our small faculty. People without many acquaintances, much less friends, in the professional military education world probably assume that faculty—whether uniformed, civilians from national security agencies, or longer-term academics—are overwhelmingly conservative in politics. I certainly have worked with some pretty ideologically conservative people.
I also worked with a surprising number of people who considered themselves quite liberal. They may have been prior military or they may have been middle of the road driven left by Trump’s anti-democratic tendencies.
But, the faculty at this institution, like any other, are a more complex mix of people from a range of experiences, backgrounds, and political beliefs.
What got my attention that Tuesday morning in January 2021 was the inability of two partisan positions to see any common ground at all. In a split second, I realized that we had no authoritative, “impartial” reality in these two men’s eyes. We lacked voices to placate both sides becaause they listened to different news sources, they cited completely different perspectives on the legitimacy of the election outcome, they were casting aspersions on the views of the other side (not on each other as individuals, to be clear) regarding what happened on 6 January. They also clearly viewed divergently what ought to happen the following week on 20 January at the inauguration, only a few hundred feet from where the insurrection occurred. In that split second, I realized each side felt a probably irreconcilable passion likely only escalate should FPOTUS, then in political exile, return to the center of the political fray.
And return he has. Once the second impeachment failed, this is the outcome—FPOTUS as the Republican standard bearer in 2024—that I anticipated, to a great extent because of what I cite about as the well of frustration, passion, and anger his supporters and haters felt.
It’s seductive to blame FPOTUS’s supporters for the whole of the problem. A friend of more than half a century wrote me weeks ago with incredible disappointment that she thought I was giving him a pass for his horrible behaviour, when I called for Trump and Biden to step down because of age. She thought Trump’s horrid lies, misogyny, and support for overturning the election overcame anything about Biden’s age, dismissing the FPOTUS’ right to run. I responded that I regularly talk about my pervasive fears about Trump’s anti-participatory verbage, justification, self-delusions, and everything else. I don’t understand how we can see him otherwise.
What I did not think to add, as I thought it was so obvious, was that millions of Americans supported him through the Republican primary process. Trump may be head of a cult but people had alternatives who they eschewed to support him as the nominee.
It has been clear for months, if not years, that our political system is in crisis. Violence was at the heart of the 1995 Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building attack by a disgruntled veteran who believed the 1993 federal law enforcement action against the David Koresh compound in Waco was illegitimate. That 1995 bombing killed almost two hundred people, including children in a daycare facility. Militia activity ramped up through the end of the Clinton administration. Deep divisions over the 2000 Bush-Gore election followed. Then founding of the Tea Party on the grounds the Obama administration overstepped the federal system with the Affordable Care Act exacerbated divisions further, and the list goes on. The attempt by several Michigander hard rightists to kidnap the state’s governor because of her political party was only one further, though thwarted, recognition of the depths of the passion in surprising places about our politics.
However, Wayne’s reminder to me this week was that evidence is the left is also plotting violence in the name of preventing Trump from returning to office. Wayne’s work fully a year ago amply explained how ready too many Americans are to throw off political constraints in place for generations. A further analysis University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape published last month regarding extremism in this country is truly shocking, so I look forward to your reactions.
Before I go further, let me state up front that interwoven throughout this issue of using violence remains the issue of legitimacy. Trump’s ongoing questions about institutions obviously sets up his supporters to challenge the outcome if he doesn’t like it, playing the “unfair” and illegitimate card. Since he appears likely to question any outcome except a huge victory on his terms, this exacerbates anxiety and may galvanize radicalized supporters.
Those who trust the system may well react much more strongly this time than in 2016 or in the aftermath of 2020; we simply don’t know. But this is why anyone concerned about election integrity must take the most basic measures to assure each and every vote counts appropriately—as a single citizen voting once in a democratic election in the her/his voting venue. To do otherwise, then challenge the outcome is a hypocrisy worthy of Trumpism.
The overwhelming majority of our fellow citizens do not, repeat do not support violence to prevent a Trump presidency but fully 10% (26 million people) do envision armed resistance to FPOTUS returning to office while a further 22.6% (58 million) are ambivalent about that armed reaction out of 260 million people. Pape’s survey data as of early July 2024 indicate the left is more willing to use violence to prevent Trump from taking office versus only 6.9% of the survey who would support armed action to return the FPOTUS to power. None of this should comfort any of us whatsoever.
These are all snapshots on where the citizens of our nation stood, as of early July or earlier, on the use of violence. Biden was the expected nominee on the Democratic ticket so this could have been linked to that highly unpopular nominee, perhaps. None of these are predictive with any certainty but together they raise an exceptionally troubling default towards violence. The implications of those actions are almost too hard to fathom because, I would opine, once norms shatter, they are almost impossible to recover fully.
That does not mean the alternative of a non-elected individual seizing power would be preferable as it most definitely would not be.
Violence is not new in this country nor are our norms of peaceful, orderly respect of the voters’ majority desires. Our peaceful transfers of political power, however, over almost two hundred fifty years have been remarkable and so respected. I, for one, fear what would happen should we squander that tradition. And it would be a conscious decision to use violence as armed reaction is not part of a peaceful transition from one administration to another.
What have we become? Who are we?
Thank you for taking time to read Actions today. I welcome the many responses I hope you have.
Be well and be safe. FIN
Robert Pape, Political Violence and the Election: Assessing the Threat from the left and the Right. University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats, 13 July 2024 retrieved at https://d3qi0qp55mx5f5.cloudfront.net/cpost/i/docs/June_2024_CPOST_Survey_Report.pdf?mtime=1720925000
Wayne Selcher, “American Political Culture in Transition: The Erosion of Consensus and Democratic Norms”, Observatório Politico dos Estados Unidos, Estudos e Análises de Conjuntura, 23 February 2024, retrieved at https://www.opeu.org.br/2024/02/29/american-political-culture-in-transition-the-erosion-of-consensus-and-democratic-norms/
Jason Wilson, “Ex-US air force specialist with Christian nationalist ties leads combat training”, TheGuardian.com, 14 August 2024, retrieved at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/14/former-air-force-christian-nationalism-combat-courses