The Grand Illusion
Yesterday, an eloquent but hard right political influencer – Charlie Kirk – was assassinated, and almost immediately everyone, particularly Republicans, began to talk about the need to stop political violence.
That’s all well and good, but it’s also hypocritical and worse.
Assassination has no rightful place in a democracy, but neither does sending troops and ICE agents into Home Depots, churches, and schools and arresting and carting off people based on their color, speech, or dress, all too often sweeping up people who are American citizens in the furor of activity to deport as many people as quickly as possible, while trying to “flood the zone,” i.e., to overload the courts and local government to the point where they can’t stop illegal and quasi-legal deportations.
That sort of behavior by the federal government is also political violence, no matter how Republicans rationalize and cover it with the quasi-legal veneer of Executive Orders. Even undocumented individuals who have committed no crimes, other than being here, deserve the protection of the law.
Violence begets violence. It always has.
The way to stop violence isn’t to commit violent acts, but to follow the law – and the Constitution – in enforcing the law.
Right now, in the frenzy to deport, Trump and his allies are stirring up more unrest, fear, and violent reactions. Equally important, too many of these measures aren’t getting rid of immigrant violent criminals. That takes patient, deliberate, long, hard effort. It also takes spending money on preventive measures proven to work.
The fifty-thousand-dollar bonuses for joining ICE are turning immigration enforcement into often-violent bounty-hunting, with the greatest appeal to would-be thugs and toughs.
More empty rhetoric and more forceful measures applied indiscriminately won’t stop or even reduce social, criminal, and political violence, except momentarily where the force is being applied, and if all that force is applied continuously, it will cost far more than funding local law enforcement and community support structures efficiently.
But then, Trump’s never been interested in building strong and effective local government; he’s only interested in building a national power base to become a de facto dictator, and over time that can only increase the violence.
Mr Modesitt,
I fear his goal is to create violent unrest, such that when his time comes to step down, he can instead declare martial law, and half the nation will support him…
You said it.
It starts with his history of violent rhetoric, too. Remember his full-page ad calling for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, who were eventually proven to be innocent?
He’s been stoking anger for forty years. Why would anyone expect any result that didn’t include violence?
Yes, this assassination will be a pretext for his administration to do something else that will add to his list of questionable acts. Recall he ordered the troops into DC on the basis of his Doge employee being beaten up by a teen boy and 15 year old girl.
And to add to Mr. Modesitt’s points, there has already been a great deal of political violence in recent years with much/most directed at Democratic politicians, but none of that is mentioned by Republicans (cf., N. Pelosi’s Husband Paul being attacked in his home, Gov Shapiro of PA having his home set a fire, Minn politicians attacked and one killed, plot to kidnap Mich Gov Whitmer).
Fighting political violence means all politicians need to lead by acknowledging when it occurs and adding their voices to those others that reject it as a means to an end. Trump is just fanning the flames.
I’ll just add that this quote attributed to Trump speaking on the WH lawn today (from Politico).
“President Donald Trump on Thursday told reporters that “we just have to beat the hell” out of “radical left lunatics,” following the killing of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.”
Of course this isn’t the only over the top statement made by a Republican politician in the wake of the Kirk shooting.
Even the media is getting in on it with some headlines claiming we are in a new era of political assassination. Really? That’s pretty rich considering the many political shootings in our US history and our collective history of violence in general.
The terrible irony is that early reports suggest that Charlie Kirk’s murderer is associated with online far right extremists.
I am so sorry I read this blog post, Mr. Modesitt. I so enjoy your quiet wisdom in many of your books, and here I find you are a shallow thinker, entirely without the objectivity I would expect in a man of your age. Your rant here is so sad to me, particularly since so much of it is factually wrong. Ah, well, feet of clay and all that.
Wrong? I think not. Those events all happened.
History confirms the association of ideological violence as a part of humanity: it is always there but becomes more acceptable at different times depending on how much time we waste hating ourselves.
US history: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/how-recent-political-violence-in-the-u-s-fits-into-a-long-dark-history
Warning: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/americas-era-violent-populism
DENIAL OF DATA CONTROL: Is/was this also a form of “Political Violence”? Or is political violence restricted to assassination: people do die as a result of inability to access water, food, shelter, medicines.
You forget that the reason ICE has to go into the neighborhood is that they are barred from taking the criminals out of the prisons. Unfortunately, since they are forced to go into the neighborhoods the collateral damage is that other less violent persons who are in conflict with the law get caught in the cross hair. You don’t see these same instances in cities whose law enforcement are working with ICE, only in jurisdictions where they oppose them.
But the problem here is that Trump is only targeting cites and states led by Democrats when many of the cities/states with high crime rates have Republican leadership — and he’s said that he hates Democrats.