Despite the strident claims of the political left, recent incidents of political violence have come not from the right but from the left. No, I do not count the January 6, 2021 incident as political violence, as that was more accurately described as an unplanned, mass act of hooliganism. Jan. 6th was a protest, at most, at which agents of the government meted out the few incidents of actual violence.
The Federalist's Eddie Scarry has some thoughts on political violence on the left and right that are worth some consideration.
Democrats may finally have gotten the message that the threat of force isn’t a political tool that only they get to use, which is great news. Now that they’ve realized it, though, they’re trying to convince voters that it’s only a real problem when their opponents do it, namely (of course) Trump voters.
An article at the leftist Vox site at the start of the year acknowledged that threats of violence “are coming from across the political spectrum.” It said, however, that “the most important ones … emanate from the MAGA faithful.”
The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie ominously predicted last week that the former president might “use the threat of violence to make officials and ordinary election workers think twice about their decisions.” On the same day, his neckbeard colleague David French claimed in a separate column that “while political violence is hardly exclusive to the right, the hostility and vitriol embedded in MAGA America is resulting in an escalating wave of threats and acts of intimidation.”
Who, precisely, is threatening violence - and who is actually delivering it? Not the right. One could point out the 2020 BLM/Antifa riots, which conservative estimates caused over a billion dollars in property damage, not to mention attacks on law enforcement, an actual political assassination, and 1,500 small businesses destroyed in Minnesota alone. Mr. Scarry makes an interesting point about this:
If there has been any increase in violent threats from the right, Democrats have themselves to thank for it. They might do themselves a favor this time and knock it off before any of those threats are made good.
They chose to drive down this road. Now they understand it’s a two-way street.
As of this writing, coming as it does on the heels of former President Donald Trump's Iowa caucus win on Monday, the left shows no signs of backing down.
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So, let's assume Mr. Scarry is prescient and that two-way street starts to host traffic in both directions. What would that look like? Taken to the extreme - and moderation in these affairs does not often trend towards moderation - it begins to look a lot like civil war. Why?
Because the left seems to view political unrest and, yes, violence, as a sort of social rheostat that they can dial up or down depending on the situation. But the right tends to view these things as a switch; one pole is marked "civilized discourse," and the other, "cut fence and sort some s**t out." And should things come to this, most of the advantages are, candidly, with the right, and not only because we're the ones with all the guns.
The left is concentrated in a few small geographic areas. For the most part, these areas are heavily urban and dependent on the outskirts – red country – for electricity, gasoline, food, and clothing, indeed most of the requirements of a modern lifestyle. It would not be difficult for a military force or even a well-organized militia to shut down imports into even a large city. The blockage wouldn’t have to be leak-proof, but even preventing fifty percent of a major city’s food and energy imports would have that city melting down within a matter of days. Indeed, in any hypothetical second civil war in the United States, that’s the main advantage the right would have; penned into their cities, deprived of internet, electricity, and food, the big blue cities would very rapidly destroy themselves. All the right would have to do is wait.
My Townhall colleague Kurt Schlichter has written some fascinating speculative fiction on what this might look like; I've read his books and they are chilling, although if anything, I think Colonel Schlichter is a bit too optimistic.
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Now, I’m not advocating the idea of a civil war. The likely result of this, regardless of which side wins, would be deaths in the hundreds of thousands at a minimum, more likely in the millions. It would mean trillions in economic losses because of the infrastructure loss and the collapse of the big cities, which in all honesty remain great centers of economic activity and innovation. It would engender hatred and ill will that would last for generations and may very well damage the Republic beyond repair. America as we know it would almost certainly be no more. This is something nobody should want and an outcome that we should take great pains to avoid.
My wife and I are more fortunate than many. No matter how bad any political unrest gets in the lower 48, it's unlikely to affect us directly up here in the Susitna Valley, although goods from the lower 48 may suddenly get much more expensive, and we may be forced to be more self-reliant than we have been - but Alaskans are pretty good at that, and as long as there are trees in the woods, salmon and trout in the streams, moose and grouse in the woods, we will be warm and fed. Anchorage may see some unrest, but as a neighbor of mine laughingly pointed out, if the troublemakers tried to push north, "They'd never make it past Eagle River."
Rural Alaskans won't put up with any nonsense. But we have children and grandchildren down below.
Political violence isn't something we should want. It isn't something we should advocate for. The republic may well not survive another Summer of Love. But while it takes two sides to avoid violence, it only takes one to initiate it, and the left has already shown they are very capable of doing so. Now, with that in mind, contemplate a presidential election this fall in which Donald Trump emerges the victor - it's difficult to think of anything more likely to set the left off. And no, I'm not saying we should avoid supporting former President Trump because of this; if he is the nominee, I will vote for him, and you should too. If there is anything that may harm the republic almost as much as a civil war, it may well be a second Biden term.
But bear in mind the apocryphal quote usually attributed to Leon Trotsky: "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."
