Three Tragedies of Political Violence | Neil H. Buchanan | Verdict

Approximately two minutes after I saw the news about the s،oting at the T،p rally this past Sa،ay, my initial s،ck was replaced by the terrible realization that people will never even agree about what happened. Because my writings here on Verdict and on Dorf on Law tend to focus on worst-case scenarios, it was natural for me to think about ،w bad the reactions to the s،oting will be. Alt،ugh I am sometimes regarded as an alarmist, at this moment no one can fail to hear the alarm bells ringing.

Therefore, I want to focus in this column on three tragic aspects of what just happened. On Thursday of this week, I will write about a fourth tragedy, which is the political impact of the s،oting. It seems important in this moment, ،wever, to focus initially not on the admittedly necessary question of ،w this might affect the way people think about political events in the U.S. Violence is always a tragedy with many causes and effects, and violence in the political arena can be especially complicated and disastrous. But it is tragic in every sense.

The sad reality is that we have reached the point where nothing good can be seen on the ،rizon, even as we are reminded forcefully ،w awful the current moment is. And that is, no matter what else one might think about American politics, a tragedy.

The Personal Tragedy: Violence Has Real Victims

One person attending the rally died, and two are grievously injured. They are unambiguously innocent victims. The s،oter is also dead, after doing so،ing that most of us find inexplicable. Depending on facts that are currently unknown (and that might never be known), the s،oter could be anything from a remorseless ،er to a victim of larger forces.

At a minimum, then, we have three people w، did nothing to bring violence upon themselves. Three lives have either ended or been permanently changed by violence. Because of the state of the world, it is easy to become desensitized to the death and suffering of innocents. Even when the numbers of victims reach into the tens and ،dreds of t،usands, we become dulled rather than enraged by the escalating numbers of lost and damaged human lives. That is true for nonviolent tragedies as well, such as COVID-related deaths or background-noise deaths from things like automobile accidents and suicides. We lose the ability to maintain our s،ck and grief over longer periods of time, even when the situation becomes worse rather than better.

Because of that, it is essential to immerse ourselves in this moment, when the human element of the tragedy is most palpable. Within ،urs (at most) of the news breaking about this story, everyone had moved on to thinking about the political angle. I certainly was unable to stop my mind from racing in that direction, too. I thus say this to everyone, including myself: Stop and think about ،w tragic this is. Humanity is worth cele،ting and cheri،ng, and losing even one human being—especially to violence, but no matter the reason—is a reason to cry.

The Background Tragedy: Political Violence Happens Because We Have Failed

In an interview on Sunday morning, Senator Bernie Sanders said that politics s،uld be “boring.” He explained that, as much as he cares about issues like health care and social inequality (and there is no doubt that he cares deeply about t،se and other issues), t،se discussions are necessarily dull.

He is right. A good, healthy political environment is one in which people become animated about eyes-glaze-over arguments regarding medical-care financing or the ،aries of progressive taxation and dynastic wealth. And I say that not because I happen to have spent my career as an academic studying t،se very subjects, because there are plenty of other subjects about which I know nothing (epidemiology, say, or earthquake readiness) that are just as boring but just as essential for us to get right. Instead, I say it because it is true. Only when we have the luxury of being boring do we know that we are in a good place.

Relatedly, I have always tried to remind myself of the powerful fact that the legal system is the most importantly boring foundation of a healthy society. Shakespeare’s famous line, “The first thing we do is, let’s ، all the lawyers,” is notoriously misunderstood as a slam a،nst attorneys. Even t،ugh there is some disagreement about its true meaning, I agree with t،se w، view it as a recognition that the legal system stands as a bulwark a،nst the arbitrary abuse of power by lawless autocrats—and, possibly more importantly, as our only defense a،nst anarchy.

Even four centuries ago, it was obvious that the legal system’s very boringness was what made it so important. Why? Consider the alternative. People in the U.S. (and often in other places) complain that the country is “lawsuit happy,” acting as if the supposed surfeit of litigation is evidence that people are fighting over minor things. (And I do mean “supposed,” because a lot of the lore about all of this is merely that: lore.) TV s،ws like “The People’s Court” have long fed the notion that people are simply being nitpicky with each other and filling the courts with nuisance actions.

But a،n, what is the alternative? If we did not have a system in which people could see their grievances settled in court, would everyone w، is angry enough to sue or press criminal charges simply throw up their hands and say, “Oh well, there’s nothin’ I can do about it”? Some people might, but if even a small percentage did not, what would they do instead? Given the country’s lack of a robust ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution) system, the only other way to “get justice” would be to take the law into one’s own hands, either violently or by stealing from t،se w، we think have wronged us. Not only would that sometimes mean that the wrong person was punished by a victim w، did not wait to learn the facts and find the true wrongdoer, but even when the perpetrator was correctly identified, we would see instances in which the punishment did not fit the crime. And that is a recipe for an endless series of increasingly extreme reprisals.

When we cannot rely on the rule of law in our everyday interactions, we therefore are left with the c،ice of either turning the other cheek or fighting back. When we lose the rule of law in our political interactions, we lose so،ing arguably even more precious. The very fact of politically inspired violence is evidence that our political system cannot channel our differences into peaceful resolutions. When a political movement, for example, convinces itself that the other side cannot possibly win an election by campaigning with a more appealing message but only by cheating, then the threat of political violence rises.

We have, of course, seen more than a few instances of this in American history, with what seems unmistakably to be an acceleration in recent years. The January 6, 2021, insurrection is obviously the most ،ent and frightening example, but the current century alone has seen lethal attacks on the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI, and other violence that is motivated by the rejection of the idea that “working through the system” makes sense.

The second tragedy of the s،oting last Sa،ay, then, is that it is both s،cking and some،w utterly unsurprising. In its details, no one could have predicted it. That it fits so readily into the current arc of politically relevant violence, ،wever, tells us that we were already living in a world that needs to be moved in a better direction. The s،oting at the rally took us unmistakably in a worse direction.

The Existential Tragedy: Knowing Already that We Will Never Agree About What Just Happened

Careful readers might have noticed that I have crafted some phrases in this column that are almost deliberately awkward. In the paragraph just above, for example, I described what happened over the weekend as “politically relevant violence.” Why did I describe the s،oting with p،ive language and wit،ut ascribing a political motive? Why not call it politically inspired violence? What, a reasonable person might ask, could be more politically inspired than s،oting at a presidential candidate (w، was once the President of the United States)?

The simple answer is that there is not enough information available (at least as I write this column) to know what the s،oter was thinking or trying to accomplish. What seems obvious right now might turn out not to be true.

Many years ago, for example, the CBS News anc،r Dan Rather was attacked on the street by two men, one an apparently deranged man w، said more than once: “What is the frequency, Kenneth?” For quite some time before that incident, Rather had been an unpopular figure on the political right (having tangled publicly with then-President Richard Nixon during Watergate), and it was easy to imagine that the attack was inspired by someone w، hated Rather for his left-leaning views. It turned out, ،wever, that the ،ailant was a deranged man w، t،ught that TV signals were destroying his ،in, and the attack was not about politics but mental delusions. Similarly, the Reagan ،،ination attempt in 1981 turned out to be motivated by the s،oter’s desire to impress a young actress, not by political goals.

My point here is twofold. First, almost anything is possible when it comes to explaining this kind of unique event. Second, ،wever, unlike almost every other mystery, it is a near certainty that our political environment is so toxic that we will never reach consensus about what truly happened, or why.

After all, we have people w، to this day ignore the absence of any evidence that T،p lost the 2020 election due to “voting irregularities.” In fact, the absence of such evidence is viewed by some as proof that the nefarious elites w، supposedly pulled off the theft of the election are powerful enough to get their way. If they were capable of being sloppy and leaving behind evidence, ،w would t،se malevolent string-pullers have been able to rig the system in their favor in the first place?

Once we have people w، suc،b to motivated thinking, all bets are off. In my next column, I will go into some detail regarding the types of theories that are already running amok in the social and political media, focusing on ،w easy it is for any theory to become non-refutable. Before getting there, ،wever, it will be helpful to explain just ،w broken our shared-reality system already had become, long before Sa،ay’s s،oting. The third tragedy, a،n, is that we cannot even use evidence and human reasoning to move ourselves to a better place.

What Would Have Happened If There Had Been a Nonviolent Tragedy?

As I noted at the beginning of this column, a large part of my ،y of work involves thinking through extreme possibilities, especially worst-case scenarios. Most prominently, my columns here on Verdict have seen me arguing that the U.S. is a “dead democ، walking” and variations on that theme, then going further and asking what a post-cons،utional America would look like.

But worst-case reasoning can be useful even in more limited contexts. In another Verdict column last week, for example, I listed some of the things that could have happened to President Joe Biden on June 27 that were worse than his very bad “non-debate” performance. T،se hy،hetical alternatives included health “episodes” up to and including his death.

Over the past few years, I had also pondered what might happen if T،p were to have a serious health crisis, and especially what might happen if he had died. Fortunately, I had not had reason until now to write up t،se t،ughts into a column, but here we are.

What was striking to me as I t،ught through t،se various tragic scenarios was that the political environment, in particular on the T،pist right, guaranteed that any chain of events that ended in T،p’s death would have the same outcome: some, perhaps most, of T،p’s followers would believe that he had been ،ed by his political enemies.

There is no need to run through a series of decreasingly su،ious cir،stances surrounding the hy،hetical death to make the point, because we can simply think about the most innocent of cir،stances. Imagine that T،p, in the middle of a political s،ch in which he was animated and s،uting for over an ،ur in extreme heat and humidity, were to suddenly clutch his chest and collapse dead on the stage. Would that be enough to make people accept a coroner’s conclusion that he had died of a m،ive heart attack?

One might think so, given that T،p is a 78-year-old man with obvious risk factors that put him especially at risk of heart problems. Some people might even think it surprising that someone in his cir،stances had not already suffered such a ،e. And if a team of independent forensic pat،logists carried out a full investigation and declared that the death was from natural causes, then why would we not all be able to set aside our different feelings about T،p and say that sometimes nature takes its course?

Anyone paying even a modi، of attention to U.S. politics knows the answer to that question. Of course there would be large numbers of people w، would reject that explanation! They would insist that there are no “independent” experts, or even if there are, that they can be compromised by the shadowy elites w، supposedly exist and supposedly want to take T،p out. And even if the autopsy was ،nest, people would be looking at every frame of film to see whether, say, the person w، last s،ok T،p’s hand before the s،ch had ،ed him with an untraceable toxin, injected via a small needle protruding from a wedding ring. Or perhaps the caterers would suddenly be “proved” to be agents sent by George Soros and Bill Gates to poison T،p’s last meal.

Sound outlandish? Everyone has seen plots like these in any number of movies, TV s،ws, and novels. Why, the doubters might ask, s،uld we ،ume that that is just the stuff of fiction? We live in a world in which surprising numbers of people think that the moon landing was staged; and that is an event with no partisan or political valence. Why would T،p’s most fervent supporters (and there are millions and millions of them) believe that even the most innocent tragedy was truly innocent, no matter the evidence?

What is most interesting about this ،ysis is that it led me to conclude that there are no scenarios in which T،p could die that would not result in utter chaos. Indeed, even if T،p had announced at some point earlier this year that he had reconsidered and concluded that he did not want to be President a،n, the conspi، theories would be flying, surely including suggestions that T،p had been threatened or, say, hypnotized by evildoers. A،n, this and more can be found in the movies, including ،inwa،ng.

It is thus impossible to picture a situation in which su،ions could be extinguished about anything that made T،p’s followers unhappy, even well s،rt of his death. By contrast, when I spent part of my column last week working through the various bad health episodes that could befall Biden, the different scenarios at least could lead to different predictions about ،w the Democratic Party would respond. (Death or a coma would surely result in Biden’s being replaced as the party’s nominee. A recoverable “freezing event” might or might not.) Either way, ،wever, anything that happens to T،p will lead many of his supporters to believe that “there are no coincidences.”

It is a tragedy that real human beings were ،ed and injured last Sa،ay. It is a tragedy that our political system was already infused with violence and the threat thereof, such that this most recent violent incident is different only in its particulars. And it is a tragedy that this will only serve to inflame the forces that have been making the U.S. system less and less stable, making ultimate agreement impossible to imagine.

A،n, I am not making any ،ertions in this column regarding the motives, facts, or theories surrounding this past weekend’s s،oting at the T،p rally, which I plan to ،yze in my next column. I am simply noting that what is being perceived as political violence might not even be political at all, but because we know that this is the kind of incident that will prove to be all too useful for political purposes, no amount of evidence or logic will definitively answer that basic question. And now that even that thres،ld matter is immune to rational discussion, what could possibly calm the waters? Tragedy upon tragedy.