America is high on political violence The political class has lost control

When one looks at the sombre reactions to this assassination attempt, it’s hard to avoid a certain sense of absurdity to it all. The shock, grief and dismay at what has happened is very real, and it is extremely bipartisan. Yet nobody can really pretend to be surprised. In fact, this shooting is singularly unsurprising: America has spent the last eight years warning about the unique evil of Trump; the Democratic Party’s re-election slogan is literally that “democracy is on the ballot”, and that if Trump were to win, a new era of fascism and darkness is sure to descend on the country. Thousands, tens of thousands, maybe millions of marginalised people’s lives are supposedly at risk; what then is an assassin’s bullet or two, given the enormity of the stakes?

It is no wonder, then, that the mood in America at this point is one of despondency and depression. Having already bought the “ticket”, people are becoming immensely uncomfortable with the way the “ride” is going. The same people who — either jokingly or seriously — talked about how someone needed to put a bullet into Trump now recoil in horror at the reality of political violence, like a kid playing too many violent video games and foolishly thinking this means he knows what real violence is like.

For a short while, most people in America are likely to try to back away from the brink, to dial down the rhetoric, to cool the talk about how the sky is falling and the other side is out to destroy everything you hold dear. And this seems to be exactly what is happening right now, on both sides of the aisle. Joe Biden himself has called for calmer tempers and cooler rhetoric: in America, differences should be settled with ballots, not bullets. Trump himself seems eager to play along: a recent Axios article laid out just how much this brush with death seems to have changed Trump’s thinking. His speech at the Republican national convention has been completely reworked in the aftermath of the failed assassination: apparently it is now aiming at trying to preach a message of political unity rather than further division. For now, both sides of America are talking about peace, love and understanding. It is their first time doing so in many, many years.

But as much as people would like this new era to last, it can’t — and it won’t. Political division isn’t merely a product of bad thoughts; often, they are the surface level symptom of much deeper issues within a society. And the sad truth about America today is that both Joe Biden and Donald Trump — as well as every other actor in the political system — completely depend on this kind of rhetoric. They cannot make do without it for very long, no matter how much they would wish to turn a new leaf. The real problem in America today is that the political system has simply been hollowed out; it is no longer capable of delivering solutions to either side of the partisan divide.

Biden himself now has historically low approval ratings and a supermajority of Americans think he is mentally unfit to serve another term. The only tool left in his toolbox is to talk about the other guy; without doing so, without stressing just how dangerous the enemy is and how thin the margins are, he has no chance. But the same goes for Trump. None of his voters really believe that he can drain the swamp, or reform the system, or somehow halt America’s very dangerous drift into insolvency and economic chaos. For them, too, all that’s left to talk about is the evil of the other side, and how sweet revenge will be.

In truth, for a well-functioning society, a bit of violent rhetoric here and there really isn’t a big deal. It is only when the political elites lose control of the situation — when they can no longer maintain the military, fix the roads and bridges, keep the economy running and manage the state in such a way that it doesn’t drown itself in an ocean of unpayable debt — that such rhetoric leads to violence and blood in the streets. But America’s elites have lost control of the situation, and now they are waking up to a nightmare they’ve unwittingly created. There is not a single American politician today who even pretends to have a plan — much less a solution — for the massive fiscal time bomb located at the heart of the current system. Social unity is completely incompatible with economic bankruptcy: when things truly fall apart, political elites can either admit that the entire political class has failed and needs replacement, or they can try to blame the other guy. Unity is a luxury; one that the American political class can no longer afford.

One can certainly sympathise with the deep, profound sense of regret and sadness that is now visible among the American political class and punditry. But political violence and psychedelic mushrooms follow the same rules in the end: there are no takebacks, no mulligans and no refunds. Once you buy the ticket, you have to take the ride all the way to the end. All you can do, no matter how bad things become, is to sit back and try to endure.

---

Malcom Kyeyune is a freelance writer living in Uppsala, Sweden

SwordMercury