By Spy Boxing Correspondent Subway Sam Silverman with
Meta-content Generator A.J. Liebling
After doing the bare minimum to avoid a collapse of government in the United States in wartime, Congress went home for a well-undeserved two week vacation, but not before indulging in gratuitous violence and threats under the Capitol dome.
We saw one preposterous Republican from Oklahoma rise from his seat to punch out a witness who had the temerity to post a Tweet showing the wrestler-turned-Senator standing on a box. (Had he been as politically-savvy as Ron DeSantis, he would have known to wear cowboy boots with hidden lifts!)
We saw another Republican hack, who until recently had been second in the line for the Presidency, punch a political opponent in the corridor, apparently because the victim had voted to oust him as Speaker. Later we learned that Sucker Puncher Kevin McCarthy had previously attacked another political opponent, Adam Kinzinger.
The reaction from your media was to variously regard all of this as a bit of boys-will-be-boys hilarity and explain it away because Congress was exhausted from working for 10 straight weeks.
Do you think that it would be OK for surgeons to brawl in the operating rooms of Mass General Hospital after being on duty for 10 weeks? Or teachers? Or home health care aides? Or anyone else who doesn't get a respite from a high-pressure job?
To his credit, Philip Bump of The Washington Post saw something more dire:
But there’s an undeniable thread that links them, an acceptance, however slight, of the idea that physical violence has a place in the resolution of disputes. Should this pattern continue — or accelerate — it would mirror other countries in which democracy is eroding. Including, at one point, the United States.
Bump went on to give some historical background, including the disturbing fact that 60% of Republicans approve of the attempted violent overthrow of the U.S. Government on January 6, 2021, an insurrection that continues today.
Let's look at a couple of other examples and see if we can find the thread.
Just a few years ago, a then-obscure Congressional candidate named Greg Gianforte responded to a legitimate question from an accredited reporter as if he were pledging the Hell's Angels:
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| Gov. Gianforte: “Any questions?” |
Greg Gianforte, the Republican candidate in Montana's special congressional election, has been charged with misdemeanor assault after he allegedly body slammed a reporter and broke his glasses on Wednesday night.
The altercation took place at Gianforte's campaign headquarters in Bozeman, Montana, the night before the state's special election. It sent political shock waves rippling through the race, with two local newspapers rescinding their support for the GOP candidate.
Ben Jacobs, a political reporter for the Guardian, said he had been asking Gianforte about the Republican healthcare plan when the candidate "body slammed" him and began shouting, "Get the hell out of here."
This outrageous and unprovoked attack on a defenseless reporter doing his job represented a clear and loathsome effort to intimidate the press and thus undermine a pillar of democracy. The outraged citizens of Montana, wanting no part of this nasty business, sent Gianforte packing and he was never heard from again.
Montana Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed on Wednesday a collection of bills restricting access to abortion, triggering legal action and challenging a 1999 state Supreme Court ruling on the procedure.
Of course, he's especially proud of his effort to pummel his state's women as if they were pesky reporters.
His vicious attack on a journalist turned out to be a real vote-winner in white, well-armed Montana, who elected him governor in 2020 by 13 percentage points. Hmmm.
But let's go back to the great granddaddy of political beat downs, in 1856. At that time, American democracy was under attack by white Southerners who were willing to sacrifice it to preserve their right not only to enslave other human beings, but also to take their enslaved humans with them anywhere in the United States regardless of whether slavery was legal in the state or territory.
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| It's back |
To preserve their power, they hatched what was essentially a violent coup in Kansas Territory to override the wishes of the locals, which was that Kansas would enter the Union as a free state.
In response, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts rose on the floor of Senate to condemn this pro-slavery anti-democratic violence.
Whereupon “ Congressman Preston Brooks [of South Carolina, which has since given us great defenders of democracy like Lindsay Graham, Tim Scott, and Nikki Haley] approached the desk where Sumner was writing letters [on the Senate Floor]. ...As Sumner started to rise, the frenzied Brooks beat him over the head thirty times or more with a gold-headed cane [until] Sumner...collapsed with his head covered in blood.” J. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom at 150.
It took years for Sumner to recover. The pre-Civil War Union never did.
According to McPherson, the brutal assault was wildly popular in the pro-slavery South: “South Carolinians feted him and sent him back to Washington with triumphant unanimity. Brooks received dozens of canes, some inscribed with such mottoes as ‘Hit Him Again’ and ‘Use Knock-Down Arguments.’ Id. at 151.
Sumner to Gianforte to January 6 to last week's brawl. What connects them?
Simple: when democracy is attacked by the forces of white reactionary supremacy, white supremacists will invariably choose violence in the support of their power over democracy. They would of course prefer to pervert the institutions of government to keep themselves in power, as George Bush and the Republican bent Supreme Court did in 2000.
But when all else fails, as it did on January 6, the white power (now doing business as the Republican Party) are content to use violence to maintain their grip on power in the face of democratic rejection.
Although using violence to maintain power is as American as lynching, it's not exclusively an American phenomenon. Fascists by definition seek to motivate a vicious minority to destroy by violence the machinery of democracy and the rule of law:
Upon Hitler's ascent, the country had undergone a brutal spasm of state-condoned violence. Hitler's brown-shirted paramilitary army, the Sturmabteilung or SA – had gone wiled, arresting, beating, and in some cases murdering communists, socialists, and Jews. Storm Troopers established impromptu prisons and torture stations in basements....As estimated five hundred to seven hundred prisoners died in custody; others endured “mock drownings and hangings,”...
E. Larson, In the Garden of Beasts at 16.
Sounds like Stephen Miller's immigration agenda.
The importance of violence as a tool of white supremacy explains its continuing appeal to white supremacists, like the 60% of New Hampshire Republicans who approve of the January 6 insurrection. It also explains why plug-uglies like Markwayne “the Prairie Prevaricator” Mullin are already raising money over his attempted beatdown of a witness:
And of course the Tangerine-Faced Defendant's calls for violence against his opponents, immigrants, and others are reliable applause getters at his rallies.
Nothing shows your contempt for democracy and your dominance over its defenders better than brawling and rampaging through the corridors of government, which is why these performances (and promises of more) thrill the anti-democratic minority.
If the appeal to white violence succeeds next year, or the majority of us choose not to vote for President Biden over disputes, real or imagined, there's no doubt what will happen on the Capitol steps in 2025:
In Ron DeathSantis's Florida, it's happening already.
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