J.D. Tuccille: Politicians must shoulder much of the blame for America's political violence
On June 14, as Minnesota police sought a man who allegedly murdered a state lawmaker and her husband and shot another and his wife, I was working security in front of an Arizona synagogue, wearing body armour and packing a pistol and pepper spray. As they arrived, members of the congregation, worried by a recent Molotov cocktail attack on Jews in Boulder, Colo., the double murder at the Jewish museum in Washington, D.C. and tensions over the war between Israel and Iran, thanked me for accepting the rabbi's request to help out. Well, of course; my wife was inside. Adding to fears were the 'No Kings' protests — some of which turned into riots — scheduled that day nationwide.
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Which is to say, sweating through my bullet-proof vest under the southwestern sun wasn't directly connected to the Minnesota incident, but both are evidence of the country's problem with political violence.
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Reporting on the assassinations in Minnesota, the BBC turned for comment to Jenna Stocker, editor of Thinking Minnesota, a political publication in a state that's known for its niceness. According to Stocker, 'Some people even here in Minnesota have really let politics guide their thinking and how they feel about their neighbours, their friends and their relatives,' and this has fractured society and driven people into hostile camps.
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The BBC added that Thinking Minnesota's parent organization, the Center of the American Experiment, 'was firebombed last year in what think-tank officials called a politically motivated attack.'
Stocker is right that political partisanship is dominating people's identities and poisoning relationships. A study published in February in the journal Political Psychology reported that, in America, 'Political identity outweighs all other social identities in informing citizens' attitudes and projected behaviours towards others.' That is, being a Republican or a Democrat is more important to Americans than shared racial, religious or class identities. Interestingly, the researchers also found that hostility towards political opponents motivates people more strongly than loyalty to their own side. Anger drives political polarization, and Americans can see the results in the arson attacks, bombings, shootings and riots throughout the country.
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Concern for the deteriorating political climate in the United States led my wife and I to take a week-long defensive pistol training course at Gunsite Academy, one of the top-ranked firearms training schools in the United States. As a political writer, correspondence in my inbox can get a little — or a lot — hostile. My wife, who is Jewish, has similar concerns about surging antisemitic violence, which is often carried out by people who convince themselves that every person wearing a Star of David is responsible for all the flaws, real or imagined, of the State of Israel. Those were reasons enough for us to spend days in the desert running through shooting techniques and combat simulations.
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