In recent years - perhaps really even decades - we have seen the rise of a new kind of political extremism within the United States. And as it tends to do, extremism feeds off of itself. The more extreme it gets, the more permission those who sympathize feel with growing even more extreme in their actions and thinking.
Does that not sound true? Remember how shocked people were when then President Barack Obama was interrupted during his State of the Union speech by a political opponent? It was regarded as almost unthinkable, a new low, for a lowly Congressman to interrupt the President of the United States during such an obviously important, nationally televised speech. Now, it hardly even makes headlines when this happens.
Indeed, it feels like we are consistently reaching new lows. And the violence is escalating, too. Again, not long ago, some of the things which have actually come to pass would have been so shocking for most Americans, as to be unthinkable. The idea of a band of militant extremists kidnapping and perhaps killing a sitting governor? An outright attempted coup d'etat, because the clear losing candidate in an election refuses to admit, or come to terms, with the fact that he lost the election? Those are things that happen in other countries, mostly third world nations, right? Not here, in the United States, which is home of the world's oldest continuous democracy. Flawed as that democracy might be, it is generally accepted by people both to the left and to the right of our national political divide as a good thing worth preserving.
Now, that democracy feels a lot less stable and a whole lot more fragile. If anything, we now seem to almost have come to expect not just some political dissension, but some outright violence, or at least attempted violence, to come as a result of that. In a country which seems to have now accepted mass shootings - even major mass shootings of 10 people or more, and even those which are racially motivated - as the "new normal," at what point now are we going to reach a point where enough people are shocked by these new developments that we collectively decide to unplug the whole thing, and find some new way.
Importantly, it seems that we need to understand that this will not come about unanimously, without some sort of dissent. After all, there is a small contingent of Americans who oppose any kind of limits to the free access of arms, even though the vast majority of us feel that, in fact, there should be reasonable limits and conditions, such as background checks, and bans on the very deadliest weapons. We will need to have some serious discussions and come up with some solutions, even if those solutions are not to the liking of some of the more extremists among us.
Below is a video link which I ran into not long ago on Youtube. I watched it, and it was actually quite an interesting discussion. It delved a bit into the history of this strand of political extremism, dating back to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. That proved shocking to many people. Initially, many had assumed that it was Islamic terrorists who were responsible. Then, when people saw a homegrown white American, with blond hair and blue eyes, who was responsible, it shook many to think that "one of us" or "one of our own" would be capable of such a thing. But again, we now seem to have grown used to it. Whether it's a white supremacist shooting up a church in South Carolina or a supermarket in upstate New York or a synagogue in Pennsylvania, or whether it's a band of violent political extremists who actually had plans to kidnap and probably harm the sitting Governor of Michigan, or a similarly violent mass of political extremists who storm the Capitol building after a then sitting president urged them to show no weakness and to be strong if they are to take back the country, we seem to largely have mastered the art of getting over it way too quickly, and to go on with what passes as business as usual. To me, it seems like this nonchalant, overly relaxed national reaction to political violence of this sort is, itself, the problem.
Do we really need another incident on such a massive scale to shock us from our indifference these days? Do we need to see yet another January 6th - perhaps this time with a successful coup d'etat, or at least a longer lasting and/or more serious such occurrence - to shake us out of our national apathy? What will it take for this recent brand of political extremism - and as importantly, the clearly increasing willingness to achieve their aims through violent means - to finally become unacceptable enough where we collectively (but again, not unanimously) decide that the time has come to end it and more beyond it.
Watch the video below. I thought it was quite interesting. Perhaps you will, as well:
U.S. Faces a Type of Extremism It Doesn’t Know How To Stop, Says Expert ...
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