To Curb Political Violence, Make Government Less Important: New at Reason

Dumping Donald Trump isn’t enough to make Americans battle less in a high-stakes political environment.

J.D. Tuccille writes:

“Political life and discourse in the United States is at a boiling point,” Middlebury College Professor Allison Stanger wrote after she and political scientist Charles Murray were assaulted, and she injured, by protesters violently opposed to granting Murray any forum to discuss his research and opinions.

Stanger largely laid the blame for escalating tensions at the (tiny?) feet of President Trump and his confrontational manner. The implication is that dumping the current White House tenant would calm national disagreements. But Trump didn’t elect himself to office—millions of Americans did the deed in a political environment that was already fraught with tension. So don’t look for easy fixes; tempers are unlikely to simmer down when political tribes see each other as enemies in a high-stakes struggle for control of a government they venerate for its power to fulfill wishes and crush enemies.

Since Stanger penned her words, and certainly since I last wrote just months ago about lefty thugs living out Weimar fantasies, political violence has escalated and, inevitably, involved more participants as demonstrated in a litany of grim news stories. For the moment, the lethal stabbings of two people by a white supremacist on a Portland, Oregon train have overshadowed the election to Congress of Republican Greg Gianforte, who prevailed despite or because of a criminal charge for body-slamming a reporter the day before the vote. Almost lost in the mix was the near-simultaneous arrest of a sometimes college professor on four counts of assault with a deadly weapon for his attacks on Trump supporters during a political rally in Berkeley, California.

“As political passions and political polarization continue to rise, intimidation and physical violence seem to be becoming more common as a part of our political life,” writes social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. He referred primarily to the conflict on college campuses, but also referenced the growing strife between ideological tribes in the world outside among “extremists on the right, as well as the left.”

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