They can’t (or won’t) do it.
T he events that unfolded over the weekend in Chicago were described by law enforcement as harrowing.
U.S. Border Patrol agents were reportedly conducting a patrol of the city’s South Side when they were set upon and “attacked” by an organized convoy of ten vehicles that “boxed in” the CBP detachment. “The officers exited their trapped vehicle, when a suspect tried to run them over, forcing the officers to fire defensively,” a Department of Homeland Security statement read. During that confrontation, one agent shot an armed woman already known to law enforcement “for doxing” and posting threats against immigration-enforcement agents. She escaped and drove herself to a hospital, where she was later arrested along with another attacker at a separate location.
That sequence of events is backed up by independent reporting, which cites prosecutors’ accounts and video evidence of the aftermath of the ramming attack captured by witnesses.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, however, proposed an alternative theory of the case, seeming to justify the mayhem. “[Federal officers] fire tear gas and smoke grenades, and they make it look like it’s a war zone,” he told CNN. “And they, you know, get people on the ground [who] are frankly incited to want do something about it, appropriately.”
“I mean, if you were on the ground and you’re having tear gas pellets fired at you,” Pritzker reasoned, “you want to react, you want something to happen.”
If it is Donald Trump’s fault that immigration enforcement agents are now regularly targeted with murderous violence, it’s also kind of his fault that Democratic Virginia attorney general candidate Jay Jones fantasized about the violent deaths of a top state Republican and his young children (as exclusively reported by National Review’s Audrey Fahlberg).
“I think it was a private conversation he had,” said Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, during a Meet the Press panel segment. “It was still awful and disgusting,” she added. “We should condemn that, but then you should condemn, when the president calls the Democratic Party the Party of Satan — why don’t we just say both of those things are wrong?”
Her interlocutor was Marc Short, onetime chief of staff to Mike Pence. He reminded Tanden that he has consistently condemned right-wing political violence, including the January 6 riot, and he has “paid the price” for condemning what he believes were Donald Trump’s efforts to foment that violence. Tanden’s attempt to break out of her defensive posture could have used a more convenient foil.
Tanden is correct in an academic sense. Political violence is a self-reinforcing proposition. Its practitioners take inspiration from acts of violence committed by their compatriots, and they resolve to mete out vengeance for similar offenses from their opponents. The quickening tempo of political violence in America will not be arrested unless we respond to it with consistency.
But Tanden and Pritzker are not contrasting themselves with Trump by attempting to shift the blame for political violence — much of which, in this moment, is coming from the far left — onto their opponents’ refusal to call out their own. Rather, they’re highlighting their own partisan predicament.
They cannot call for Jones to submit to consequences for his repulsive actions because to do so would implicate the Virginia Democratic Party within a month of crucial statewide elections. Sure, Senator Mark Warner called the comments “appalling.” Gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger said she was “disgusted.” State Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell said the remarks represent “a serious lapse in judgment that cannot be defended.” But they stopped short of calling for Jones to exit the race. Indeed, Democratic voters “have to be mature in our thinking and how we vote,” said Virginia House Speaker Don Scott. “We can’t get distracted, because they want us to get distracted by the text message here or something else.”
What are we witness to here but an effort to have it both ways — a situation in which those who practice or welcome political violence are somehow also the sympathetic victims in their stories? They’ve been driven to madness by provocation after provocation by the real villains in this tale. Can we honestly blame them for their discrete antisocial or even criminal actions unless we condemn all the environmental factors to which they’re supposedly responding?
Well, one of those environmental factors is the degree to which influential elites appear to regard political violence as a misdirected but useful expression of political zeal — one that might be harnessed and directed toward productive ends. That was how the Democratic Party approached their tormentors among the activist class even as they tried to violently seize the Democratic National Committee headquarters and tore at the makeshift fencing around the party’s nominating convention like a zombie horde. It’s how they’re responding to expressions of political violence from their party’s fringe today. Something has been done to these people. If we can only “validate” their concerns, we can wield them like an instrument — like a weapon.
The sentiments on display on the Sunday shows this past weekend represent a curious mixture of aggrieved victimhood and a remorseless will to menace. It will not put a stop to the violence. In fact, the party’s steadfast refusal to acknowledge its provenance is likely to beget more of it.