Originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press
I originally planned to write about the massive number of politics-oriented texts that I’ve been getting on my phone. They were unsolicited and annoying, regardless of which candidate they’re promoting. I know that many of you were inundated with these texts and shared my concern. When I searched online for directions on how to stop all this, I discovered that the Federal Trade commission doesn’t block political campaign texts and calls. Political campaigns are run by legitimate organizations that know how to go around the rules meant to stop robocalls and robotexts. I was going to share the advice of a blog, “How To Survive the Election Year and Political Text Spam That Comes With It”. But so much changed with the weekend assassination attempt.
The political world suddenly turned silent. There were no more texts like these: “Desperately asking”, Begging – please”, “We’re nervous and double checking”, “Please: if you don’t respond, our dataset will be incomplete.” And these were the nice ones. Other texts were name-calling accusations accompanied with conspiracy theories and assertions that the other political party would be the downfall of America. I will say that the Republican-based texts are much better at the name, blame, and shame game than the Democrat ones.
With the attempted assassination of former President Trump, it’s understandable that politicians are calling for the country to come together and asking for lowering the level of anger in the political rhetoric. But given how anger has fueled so much of politics recently, the country’s chill may be short and minor. The silencing of political texts lasted less than 24 hours. How long will it take for the dehumanizing and denigrating rhetoric to get put back into the texts?
I’m hopeful about our future but a decade of research says such optimism is iffy. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published an excellent article, “Polarization, Democracy, and Political Violence in the United States: What the Research Says”.
The article points out that misbeliefs about the other party are at fault, especially among progressive activists and extreme conservatives. The misbeliefs are fueled not necessarily by the voters themselves, but by the extreme polarization of the politicians. For example, In 2013, Republican party chairs at the county level selected 10 extreme candidates for every 1 moderate; the ratio was 2 to 1 for Democrats. They knew that voters are vulnerable to polarizing language and usually adjust their preferences to match what their party has normalized.
So the real problem is the normalization of hate and violence. One way that politicians do this normalization is to create a sense that violent acts are permitted and might even make the perpetrator a hero. Remember Kyle Rittenhouse? The young man was applauded after offering “protection” from a Black Lives Matter protest in Wisconsin and killing 2 people.
Politicians are now claiming that they’re all for unity and against violence. But their conspiracy theories that promote hate have long been in the atmosphere. Research shows that attempts at unity in such an environment have little effect, and any possible impact doesn’t last long.
Conspiracy theories are now multiplying quickly: 1) This was a deliberate attempt by Biden’s security forces to kill Trump, 2) This was a “Deep State” coup. White Supremacists are blaming Jews because they couldn’t beat Trump by cheating this time.
What to do? We must go beyond TV interviews and ensure that there are consequences to violent political action. Perpetrators, like those in the Jan. 6 insurrection shouldn’t be given a pass. And never call them patriots. Next, leave platforms spreading conspiracy theories: X and TikTok. The hate and political violence must stop!
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