The accountability gap

Political violence may be on the rise. Have we considered that it might be partly because we've created a society where some people are effectively above the law?

So there I was, doing clean and jerks in the garage gym while listening to The Daily podcast. Pretty normal Monday, really. Except this time the podcast made me very mad, which might have been good for my clean and jerks but bad for my spirit.

The episode was titled “What Drives Political Violence in America,” and it began with a fairly simple assertion: We are living in an age of “violent populism,” which has seen a drastic increase in the number of people — from both ends of the political spectrum — who support or condone political violence.

I haven’t done the research on that, but yeah, I’d say it feels about right. It does seem like there has been a rise in incidents of people showing up at the homes of elected officials with hammers or shooting at famous political provocateurs who have said things they don’t like. It also seems like there are more people who, when they hear of those incidents, think that maybe the victims fucking deserved it — whether they say this out loud or not.

Where this episode lost me was when it started asking why this might be happening, as well as what should be done about it. The guest, University of Chicago Professor Robert Pape, suggested that there were essentially two root causes: 1) For the first time in U.S. history, we are transitioning from a white voting majority to a non-white voting majority, a shift which freaks some people out (especially the key American demographic known as bitch-ass racists), and 2) Since the mid-1980s, we’ve seen a massive shift in wealth toward to the top 1%, with neither political party really doing anything to stop or even slow that.

Pape cites some other contributing factors, like the rise in violent rhetoric among American politicians, but it’s those two factors above that he seems to think have done the most to create an environment where people on both sides are more open to or understanding of violent extremism.

Here’s what pissed me off, though. At no point does he seem willing to consider that maybe one big thing driving all this is that our wealthy, powerful elites seem completely immune to the same consequences and repercussions that the rest of us experience. As in, maybe people are more likely to throw some guns in a bag and go do the shit themselves when it seems like nobody else is ever going to address the problem. Once you tell us some people are above the law, maybe you increase the odds that a mob will eventually form to forego the law in favor of a swifter form of justice.

(Ever notice how angry mobs always know where to find a bunch of pitchforks in a hurry?)

You know why I think that might be behind certain extreme acts of political violence, such as the latest assassination attempt against Donald Trump? Because that’s what the dude who did it fucking said.

“I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.” That’s from the so-called manifesto allegedly written by the alleged dude who allegedly thought he could just blow right past the Secret Service like Randy Moss on a downfield vertical route. That’s him telling us that the reason he undertook what is objectively an irrational and extreme (not to mention poorly planned) act was because he believed Trump is guilty of horrible crimes he will never be held accountable for.

Just so we’re clear, I don’t support what that guy (allegedly) did. That cannot be our solution to these problems. We can’t live in a society where everyone takes it upon themselves to be the divine hand of justice against those they believe to be guilty.

But if there is an uptick in incidents of people going vigilante mode on CEOs and elected officials for crimes either real or imagined, we should at least consider the possibility that one of the contributing factors is how seldom powerful people in this country are held accountable.

Trump is probably the most obvious example, and in a million different ways ranging from the obvious, daily corruption to the mountain of sex crime evidence. (LOL at the people who still think he was somehow very good friends with Jeffrey Epstein for many, many years but was somehow the only guy in that orbit NOT abusing kids, especially considering how many times Trump looked directly into various video cameras back then and said creepy shit about actual children. Can you imagine? The mental gymnastics required? The guy spent decades making cheeky remarks, the consistent message of which was ‘I’m out here banging the youngest chicks I possibly can,’ and then you somehow talk yourself into believing that he definitely didn’t touch any of the teenage girls procured by his very good friend, the world’s most famous teenage girl procurer? Incredible work.) But he is far from the only one.

If any of us got caught insider trading or dumping poison into the local water supply, we would go to prison. If we enthusiastically encouraged the delusions of a man in a way that led to him murdering his mother, they’d put us right there in Charles Manson’s old cell. If we defrauded our communities out of tons of money, we’d actually be punished. But somehow we have come to accept that this type of justice only applies to normies and never the elites. It’s such an obvious fact of American life — and has been since the days of the robber baron industrialists — that it seems almost trite to even point it out. Of course the wealthy can rape and pillage with impunity. That’s just America, baby!

But now we live in the age of the unhinged gunman. We churn out mass shooters the way Switzerland makes chocolate. We are also increasingly isolated from one another, which probably ups the odds that we’ll spend hours a day in niche internet sub-communities that might gradually melt our brains and erode our sense of a shared reality. Even if only one in 100,000 of us decide to act on that by taking a quick jaunt to the local sporting goods store for some of the high-powered weaponry that’s available at a bargain price, it’s still a big problem.

Oddly enough, we were absolutely willing to accept that problem when it was just schools getting shot up. When the bullets start flying at the rich and powerful, then something must be done.

The question of what, though, was another topic that made Professor Pape sound like he was talking to a country that doesn’t exist anymore. His solution was for political leaders to unite across the aisle and condemn political violence of all stripes.

“Our leaders are the only real source we have to diminish the spirals of violence that are now occurring,” Pape said on The Daily. “I think it would be a very good idea to do something radical. And this would be Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic Leader in the House, to reach out to Donald Trump and say, could there be a joint video statement by the two leaders condemning political violence on all sides?”

First of all, close your eyes and just try to picture Trump doing that. See if your imagination does not balk at the task. Second of all, did this man just say we need to “do something radical” and then settle on “a joint video statement” as the radical idea? In what world is that a radical act? That is possibly the most feckless suggestion I could imagine, aside from his other idea, which is for all the rest of us who don’t support political violence to “send letters [to our elected officials] to say it is high time that we have Democratic and Republican leaders jointly condemning political violence.”

This strikes me as a laughably impotent suggestion. If I’m one of the wealthy elites profiting off the unraveling of American society from the comfort of my fortified bunker, I’d love for the mob to settle for writing letters to their Congressmen. That is the exact kind of status quo bullshit I’d be hoping for. Wish a motherfucker would write to the lawmakers I already bought off and then call it good. It’s the rise of do-it-yourself street justice that would actually keep me up at night.

Again though, we are not going to shoot our way out of this problem. When the UnitedHealthcare CEO got murdered, the company did not respond by reexamining its policies or treatment of customers. Instead it just named a new CEO and increased security right along with everyone else in the industry. Vigilantism might feel like justice in the moment, but it is not a substitute for an actual functioning justice system.