The specter of violence increasingly casts a dark cloud over American politics and civic life. Many participants in the political process are normalizing the use of violence in ways that will help make such violent acts more common over time.
For instance, Jay Jones, a Democratic member of Virginia’s House of Delegates, was elected state attorney general in early November despite texts from 2022 that revealed his fantasies about executing the Republican speaker with “two bullets in the head.” Jones also expressed his wish that the lawmaker’s children would “die in their mother’s arms.”
From the Republican side came revelations of the Telegram chat involving leaders of various Young Republican groups. The banter went well beyond political hyperbole. There were racial, ethnic, antisemitic and sexual slurs, casual references to torturing, burning and gassing political opponents, and references to rape, Nazis and Adolf Hitler.
There should be no place in America for the politics of hatred and violence, which affects all of us. While Attorney General-elect Jones and trash-talking Young Republicans are not to blame for these terrible acts, they have helped to contribute to the corrosion of politics across the country.
At this dire moment we all should stare into the abyss and take a big step back. We all have a huge stake in preventing violence from becoming the new political norm.
Abstract pleas for civility are insufficient. We have raced past the point where American politics can be fixed with an adjustment or two in participants’ language and demeanor. At stake is how we see each other and our joint participation in the public square.
There is a path forward that offers hope for rescuing American politics from its increasing descent into discord and even violence. Moreover, it is based on what Americans once knew so well: the importance of respecting life and liberty based on universal or inalienable rights.
Americans should reflect on other moments when our society was tearing itself apart, with death replacing dialogue. Six decades ago, Americans were bitterly divided over the increasingly pressing demand for equality for all. On April 4, 1968, the greatest leader of that struggle, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was struck down by an assassin’s bullet. Although it cost him his life, the principles he left behind helped bring us back together. Today they continue to offer a template for the future, a practical vaccine against hatred and violence.