By Darlin Navarrete
WASHINGTON, DC – This past Saturday’s attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump was the most recent hit to the hold the U.S. has on democracy and rule of law, charged Austin Sarat in a recently released statement by VERDICT JUSTIA.
In the statement, Sarat notes, “Assassination of someone campaigning for the highest office in the land is a direct assault on the right of every voter to choose who they want to represent them,” noting that avoiding political violence to silence individuals specifically from those whose views we find distasteful by both citizens and leaders is required by democracy.
It is also necessary in a democracy to not only abide by but respect a wide variety of views and voting choice of “candidates we abhor,” said Sarat, writing the survival of democracy will not stand if people undermine elections because of results they don’t like.
In the article, Sarat continues, “I do not mean to equate an assassination attempt with an attempt to steal an election, but rather to explore the ways they both undermine democracy.”
Sarat references a New York Times report, “While there were unsuccessful assassination attempts, incidents or plots targeting George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama during or after their terms, Mr. Trump was the first current or former president wounded in an act of violence since Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981 by a would-be assassin trying to impress a Hollywood actress.”
Despite it being too early to know the reasoning behind this attempted killing of Trump by Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old Republican, Sarat agrees with Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir’s comments that “no one in America can truly be surprised by each new outbreak of mayhem and bloodshed, whether it occurs on the streets of a large city, inside a rural church or a suburban big-box retail store, or at a presidential campaign rally in post-industrial western Pennsylvania.”
Sarat notes O’Hehir’s statement, “To a large extent, we never really know what drives people to commit acts of irrational violence — or, to put it more accurately, we are overloaded with too many reasons, and we all get to pick the ones that support our existing worldview. So it will be, unhappily for our rapidly decomposing polity, with this apparent assassination attempt against Donald Trump.”
Sarat describes the example O’Hehir gave as a clear indicator of the way attempted assassinations are deteriorating the county’s already damaged political system.
O’Hehir, writes Sarat, argues, “It wasn’t surprising, that as soon as reports emerged that shots had been fired at Trump, social media erupted with outlandish allegations that Joe Biden had ordered a hit on his nemesis or, conversely, that the incident was a false-flag operation meant to cast blame on Trump-hating liberals and provoke a wave of sympathy for the recently convicted ex-president.”
Sarat viewed the way this event played out by watching the coverage in Pennsylvania on Fox News, and wrote he noticed Sean Hannity quickly trying to maneuver it into political advantage for Trump; mentioning his “courage and fighting spirit” and how Hannity said America needs that kind of leadership.
Sarat said O’Hehir blamed the attack “on the overheated rhetoric used by President Biden to brand Trump an enemy of democracy and to blast the media for labeling the former President a ‘fascist.’”
O’Hehir’s opinion was accompanied by Laura Ingraham, who expressed anger toward Democrats, and Newt Gingrich, who appealed to the religious public by stating Trump’s survival of the attack was an “act of providence,” reported Sarat. Sarat adds Vivek Ramaswamy said, “God intervened today to save not just Donald Trump’s life but the life of this country.”
Sarat explains how some Republican politicians have criticized President Biden during a fundraising event when he said, “It’s time to put Donald Trump in a bullseye.”
Continuing that rhetoric, Sarat mentions how Senator J.D. Vance didn’t waste time in including, “Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
On Sunday, former President Trump said that “it is more important than ever that we stand United, and show our True Character as Americans, remaining Strong and Determined, and not allowing Evil to Win.” But Sarat maintains “his allies are singing from a different hymnal.”
Sarat states the irony behind individuals who have instilled fear and hatred in their political brand and have called President Biden to name those who are now blaming him for fomenting violence.
Sarat said, “How ironic that just hours before the attack in Pennsylvania, Biden called for a ban on assault weapons (or the kind that were used to shoot Trump) and universal background checks.”
Sarat explains, “Beyond these immediate reactions we know that in other putative democracies, as political scientist Paul Standiland notes, ‘electoral competition is intertwined with violence.’”
Sarat informs us Standiland continues to analyze, “Pro-state militias target the supporters of opposition parties; states use security forces to repress dissidents and intimidate the electorate; political parties build armed wings; insurgents attack voters and candidates; and local elites use elections as a front for pursuing feuds and rivalries.
“In a world where the formal mechanisms of electoral politics have become de rigueur, the grim intersection of violence and voting is the central challenge.”
Sarat gives space for Staniland’s point of view, writing, “It is remarkable how wide-ranging electoral violence is (and how) important and broad the politics of violence are. Electoral violence can undermine representation, build coercion and brutality into everyday political practice, shape regime- and state-building, and fuel insurgencies, local private armies, and security force politicization.”
Despite the U.S. not being there yet, the signs are threatening, Sarat points out.
Sarat cites A New York Times article that notes a nationwide poll executed last month “found that 10 percent of those surveyed said the ‘use of force is justified to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president.’”
A third of those who gave that answer also said they owned a gun…. Seven percent of those surveyed said they ‘support force to restore Trump to the presidency.’ Half of them said they owned guns.”
The New York Times referenced Robert Pape, a political scientist who asserts, “The shooting at Mr. Trump’s rally ‘is a consequence of such significant support for political violence in our country.’
“Indeed,” the Times notes, “‘significant lone wolf attacks motivated by political violence have been growing for years in the United States, against members of Congress from both parties as well as federal officials and national leaders,’” includes Sarat.
Sarat reports the looming threat of political violence is so pervasive that “[i]n October, the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, published a report that found nearly 14 percent of those surveyed strongly agreed that there would be a civil war in the United States in the next few years.”
Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group is quoted in Fortune arguing Americans’ “willingness to use political violence may be the highest since the Civil War,” wrote Sarat.
Even if the rest of the 2024 campaign were to go through without any more targeted violence towards the presidential candidates, it is highly likely that what occurred to Trump will stroke the “ongoing onslaught of violent messages, particularly to federal lawmakers and other public officials’ that CNN says, ‘threatens to disrupt the American machinery of government,’” added Sarat.
Sarat explains CNN reminds the public those threats “have also recently targeted election officials,” and are, “perhaps the most dangerous hate crimes…They’re really scary because they can take down a democracy.”
Additionally, Sarat confirms there is little confidence to backup the aspect that after votes are counted in November calmness will prevail, quoting the New York Times, that writes, “The Republican Party and its conservative allies are engaged in an unprecedented legal campaign targeting the American voting system. Their wide-ranging and methodical effort is laying the groundwork to contest an election that they argue, falsely, is already being rigged against former President Donald J. Trump.”
The New York Times adds that “unlike the chaotic and improvised challenge four years ago, the new drive includes a systematic search for any vulnerability in the nation’s patchwork election system.”
The GOP is following a “two-pronged approach: restricting voting for partisan advantage ahead of Election Day and short-circuiting the process of ratifying the winner afterward if Mr. Trump loses. At the heart of the strategy is a drive to convince voters that the election is about to be stolen, even without evidence.”
Sarat affirms that much like the attempted assassination on former President Trump, the continuous endeavor to undermine the “confidence in elections is an assault on democracy (even if it is clothed in the rhetoric of seeking to protect election integrity).”
Sarat concludes that all Americans should want every individual to have the ability to vote for candidates of their choice and have that choice be respected no matter what it is, noting, “Saturday’s assassination attempt and the unfolding effort to contest the election result if Biden wins is a reminder how far we are from seeing that wish fulfilled.”
Crooks also donated money to a Democratic-leaning political action committee on the day President Joe Biden took his oath of office.
With Trump’s and his followers’ often violent rhetoric Republicans encourage political violence. Just listen to people like felon Steve Bannon and watch their unified one-arm salutes. The following are not random false flags.
And Jack Black’s band member made this disgusting statement:
The point is this kind of stuff is all over the place and we can go tit for tat all day long but it means nothing.