Political Violence Is Here, and It’s Working

Opinion|Political Violence Is Here, and It’s Working

My mother always told me that the law is whatever the person with the gun says it is.

She meant it both literally, in dealing with the police stops that are a part of every Black American’s life, and metaphorically, as a basic life lesson on the nature of power.

Americans like to think that kind of brutal understanding of law and power is beneath us. Freewheeling political speech, protected by the Constitution, makes political violence unnecessary and unlikely. Or so we think.

The truth is a gunman assassinated a sitting lawmaker and her husband in Minnesota last weekend on the day the president feted himself with a poorly attended, badly choreographed military parade. His condolences for the fallen were perfunctory, especially for a man who spends words like he spends other people’s money. And when a reporter asked him if he would call Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, he was flippant: “Why would I call him? The guy doesn’t have a clue.”

Sometimes violent political speech is obvious, like the president calling former Representative Liz Cheney a war hawk who should know what it feels like when “the guns are trained on her face.” But sometimes violent political speech is not what is said but what isn’t said. Or even the way that it isn’t said. It was evident in President Trump’s insistence that those who stormed the U.S. Capitol in 2021 were “very special,” instead of violent insurrectionists. It was clear, too, in his callous response to last weekend’s assassinations, an obvious case of the dangerous escalation of political violence.

A culture of fear shrouds this administration from the consequences of its actions. Trump taunts. He threatens. He hides his violent language behind humor that’s less funny than plausibly deniable. His behavior sets the tone for greedy political attention hogs. There’s no shortage of them. They curry his favor because they want his power for themselves. I’m not just talking about politicians and pundits. Online, loyalists act out a presidential vision of power by harassing and dehumanizing those he marks as ugly, stupid, lazy, fat and generally subhuman.

Trump is the Republican Party. That is settled. His violent talk is, then, the official political communication strategy of the ruling party and its followers. And that ruling party is stripping this country for parts.