Hostages to whatever they choose to believe
Hasan Piker, a leftist streamer whose influence is rising, made a point recently that I can’t stop thinking about. He said this about the MAGA movement: “It feels like we are held hostage by whatever they choose to believe.”
I recognize that some of reality is up for interpretation. But surely not all of it.
JD Vance chose to guest host Charlie Kirk’s podcast on Monday. Vance and others (Stephen Miller, Karoline Leavitt, Tucker Carlson) said a lot of troubling things. But I want to focus on two clips. Here is the first.
“It’s a statistical fact that most of the lunatics in our politics today are proud members of the far left.” As you might have guessed, this is not a fact.
Vance is referring to YouGov poll conducted after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. YouGov has been asking this question since October 2022: “How big of a problem do you think political violence is in the U.S. today?”
You can see the trend here. When the victim of political violence is a Democrat, Republicans are less concerned. When the victim is a Republican, Democrats are less concerned. This is a troubling, but understandable trend.
YouGov asked another question, and conservatives have understandably seized on the results: Do you think it is ever justified for citizens to resort to violence in order to achieve political goals?
Young liberals are the most troubling group here, no doubt about it.
I do wonder what it must be like for one’s entire adulthood to have been dominated by the MAGA movement. I can say this, it has certainly radicalized me to some extent.
Here’s another poll on political violence in politics, and it tells a different story.
Essentially, Republicans were interested in resorting to violence when Biden was president, and then their interest waned considerably after Trump was re-elected. The peak of Republican acceptance for violence occurs right around January 6, 2021.
Perhaps the YouGov poll reflects a real change amongst Liberals/Democrats after living through eight months of the second Trump administration. Will our democracy survive this administration? What will it take to preserve our democracy? What options should be on the table?
Tad Stoermer, scholar of the American revolutionary period and author of an upcoming book on a resistance history of the United States, wrestles with these questions honestly.
“Is there such a thing as a moral high ground when you’re fighting for your life?” It’s a question that I never thought I’d have to consider. I have not lost all hope, but I refuse to be naive.
Over this past weekend, a graduate student working on online extremism noticed that a recent study on domestic terrorism had been removed by the Trump administration. The study was funded by the National Institute of Justice (overseen by the Department of Justice, led by Pam Bondi) and published on January 4, 2024/.
Why was it removed? Because it describes actual reality, not MAGA reality. Here is the first paragraph from that study.
Here is the other clip from Vance’s monologue that deserves attention. In it, Vance references something Kirk said about black women. I have also included that clip here.
“He never said anything like that.”
“He never said anything about black women as a group. He made an argument for judging people of all races and backgrounds by their own individual merits.”
Reality doesn’t stand a chance with these folks.
By the way, the article in The Nation that Vance cites includes these lines.
I do not believe anyone should be murdered because of their views, but that is because I don’t believe people should be murdered generally, regardless of who they are or what they’ve done. I am against the death penalty, pro–gun control, and believe war is a failure of humanity, not a necessary byproduct of it. Kirk was fine with murder as long the right people were dying.
The writer, Elizabeth Spiers, condemns political violence, as do I. But she shows no sympathy for Kirk. She doesn’t have any sympathy to give, and I understand that.
I leave you with this. This is Megan Kelly, former Fox News personality, explaining how this is actually all Barack Obama’s fault. I’m serious.
As Jonathan V. Last of the Bulwark likes to say, “Good luck, America.”