Like many Americans, I am still trying to process what happened in Butler on Saturday. In Monday’s commentary and on Talkline Monday, I found myself repeating what a lot of other people are saying—we need to tone down the hostile and apocryphal rhetoric and return to some sense of normalcy.
I still believe that to be true but, upon reflection, perhaps what we are witnessing now is just the latest version of what has always been normal. Kevin D. Williamson, national correspondent for The Dispatch and former writer and editor of the conservative National Review thinks so.
“Ours is a polity founded in revolution, and, however urgently or frequently all the best people will come out this week and assure us that ‘there is no place for violence in American politics,’ there has always been a place for violence in American politics. It is part of who we are,” he wrote.
Williamson is not condoning the violence, but he is acknowledging that our history is filled with acts of political violence and its victims: John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Presidents Ronald Reagan, Abraham Lincoln, Gerald Ford, James Garfield, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, presidential candidate George Wallace, Representatives Gabby Giffords and Steve Scalise. The list goes on.
Sadly, the attack on former President Donald Trump Saturday was not unprecedented. Fortunately, only a few deeply troubled or misguided individuals follow through on their nihilistic tendencies, but a lot of us think about political violence. A University of Chicago Institute of Politics poll of 1,000 registered voters in 2022 found that one in four Americans feel so alienated from their government that they believe it may “soon be necessary to take up arms” against it.”
Our leaders call for unity, and former President Trump has said that he has rewritten his planned address at the Republican National Convention to reflect that theme. Trump supporter Tucker Carlson said he believes Trump’s call to unite America is real. “Getting shot in the face changes a man.”
A unifying speech from Trump would help, but I have doubts it can be sustained. Remember how we were all united after 9/11? We were all in it together, at least for a while. If we could not remain united after the most horrific attack ever on U.S. soil, then I’m not sure this time will be much different.
But we do need to change, or at least start to bend the arc.
We can be united in principle but have different opinions. In fact, in a free society we should have wide ranging views and strongly held beliefs about any number of things. However, the success of our republic rests on how we resolve those differences.
Early civilizations settled their disputes through physical conflict. When one tribe wanted something the other tribe had, if they were strong enough they just took it, causing a lot of bloodshed in the process.
The evolution of politics was supposed to change all that, and in many instances it has. Instead of massacring the other side, cooler heads came together to try to figure out a way to govern without conflict.
But it seems that primal instinct to obliterate the opposition remains. We know it is in our history, maybe it is also in our DNA. The very language of our political discourse suggests that it is, since so much of it includes analogies to war.
Like many, since Saturday I have clung to the notion that this is not who we are in America, that we are better than this. I want to believe that, and I see enough goodness in people every day to have hope.
But current events piled on top of our history suggest we have a long way to go to fulfill the promise of a “more perfect union.”