The violence has come regularly for years, in one politically charged spasm after another. A member of Congress shot through the head in Tucson, Arizona. Assaults on the Holocaust Museum, a Planned Parenthood office and the Family Research Council, a socially conservative group. Gunmen targeting black churchgoers in South Carolina, Indian immigrants in Kansas and police officers in New York and Texas.
The attempted slaughter of Republican lawmakers on a baseball diamond outside Washington was less an aberration than the latest example of a grim trend, widely remarked upon by leaders in both parties, but never slowed or stopped.
And with lawmakers, legislative aides and Capitol police officers hospitalized on Wednesday, a process of mourning and recrimination unfolded as a kind of familiar ritual, with a somber statement from the president and bipartisan denunciations of violence quickly giving way to finger-pointing and blame on social media.
Even high-level gestures of conciliation, including from President Donald J. Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders, did little to blunt the sense that America’s civic culture is consumed with anger and breaking down—though mental illness sometimes makes it impossible to say exactly what leads to violence.
To survivors of past attacks, the shooting in Virginia—perpetrated by a 66-year-old former Sanders supporter who expressed rage over Trump’s presidency—came as a sign that the worst might still be ahead.
Former Sen. John C. Danforth, Republican-Montana, said the violence reflected a contagion in America’s political culture, in which adversaries were treated as “people to be destroyed”. He said Trump and Democratic leaders, as well as the news media, all deserved blame.
“We are inundated by rage,” Danforth, who is an ordained minister, said in an interview. “It’s not just practicing politicians. It’s the demand from the base of the two parties, and it is in large part encouraged by the media.”
Danforth, 80, issued a searing rebuke to his own party in 2015, after the suicide of a state officeholder, Thomas Schweich, who had been the target of brutal personal attacks. In a eulogy Danforth warned, “Words can kill.” But he acknowledged ruefully on Wednesday that practitioners of that brand of politics seldom paid a price for it.
“It apparently works,” he said. “It wins elections, wins ratings.”
Ron Barber, a former aide to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat-Arizona, who was wounded in the 2011 shooting that nearly killed her, and then briefly replaced her in Congress, said Wednesday’s attack brought back “terrible memories” for him. After his own election in 2012, Barber recalled, people left messages at his office threatening to punch or kill him.
“Fast-forward to 2017, and I’m sorry to say, it gets worse,” said Barber, a Democrat. “What happened in 2016 was a presidential campaign that I think really ramped up the anger and vulgarities that we see directed at members of Congress.”
That toxicity does not emanate only from politicians, Barber said. “I am on Facebook and I see things there that I couldn’t imagine anyone saying about another person,” he said. “We’ve seen an increase in racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia. It’s time for all our leaders, from the president on down, to say, ‘Stop’.”
Voters on the left and the right described themselves as shaken and fearful of what might happen next. Among conservatives, the shooting appeared to confirm a belief that liberal opposition to Trump had taken a sinister turn, veering into outright violence. For liberals, the attack stirred concern about the potential for extremism on the left, and deepened a sense—dating from Barack Obama’s presidency—that ordinary partisan conflicts had taken on more menacing overtones.
In Fairhope, Alabama, B.J. Middleton, a retired police officer, said the explosive political atmosphere recalled the time of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968. Middleton, 78, who supports Trump, said he increasingly feared “violence coming from the left”.
“I was there for the riots and what happened to Dr. King, and I’ll tell you, it feels like we’re building toward something again,” Middleton said. Kayla Winner-Connor, a graduate student in Los Angeles, said she was dismayed but not surprised by Wednesday’s violence.
“I hate to say that—everything we’re hearing seems really extreme and it has been polarized for a while, but now it is dangerous,” said Winner-Connor, who said she was not a supporter of Trump. She added, “His agenda feels so wrong and I feel an emotionally charged response, but this is spawning some extreme reactions.”
Image credits: AP