Photo Credit: Gabriel Sandoval, Associated Press
In what could only reasonably be considered an unfortunate form of political intimidation, the office that houses the Arizona Democratic Party headquarters was shot at last week. While it was overnight and clearly not intended to hurt anyone, it also follows a similar incident with a pellet or BB gun earlier in the week.
Mind you, local political junkies will remember a much more serious act of political intimidation four years ago during the heat (literal and metaphorical) of the 2020 Presidential election, when a fire bomb was thrown into the previous headquarters building, burning it beyond salvageability.
And one doesn’t need to have a long memory to remember the two attempts on former President Trump’s life, the first coming an inch away from being a successful attempt and the second snuffed out before shots were fired. While the political proclivities of both attempted assassins have been debated, it is evident that they both wanted the former President dead.
The point? Political extremism and intimidation is not just a problem on one side of the aisle. The temperature has gotten too hot around the country.
One could make a reasonable extrapolation that the problem in Arizona leans much more towards a fringe segment of the Republican voter base that has bought into a conspiracy of a stolen election (after all, there haven’t been any similar incidents at Arizona Republican Party or Maricopa County Republican Party headquarters), but it is not a localized problem. With widespread messaging circulating about how a second Trump presidency would lead to the literal end of our country (and sometimes the world), it’s not far-fetched to believe that many would feel compelled to fix that.
Moreover, while instances of violence from the extreme left are not relegated to the Trump era (history buffs will remember the Weather Underground of the 1970’s, and an assassination attempt on Reagan perpetuated by a fanatic who wanted to impress Jodi Foster), hatred over him has seem to compelled the lion’s share of extremism since then. Even the person who shot former House Majority Whip Steve Scalise demonstrated an obsession with Trump’s presidency.
While it’s rare to be able to ringfence a rise in violence around one particular factor, it’s hard to deny at this point; between rage over conspiracy theories whipped up by the former President, and fear over a dystopian future if said former President got back into power again, it all seems to directly revolve around one man. That said, when our current events and news intakes are dependent on algorithms that serve us news that compel us to click, and often out of outrage, it’s clearly a larger issue than just one man.
We can hope that when he eventually retires that this partisan animosity will cool. We can hope that the rubicon hasn’t been crossed and we can start to come together as a country. But that will not change the fact that we are often served news items that tick us off because we are more likely to click on them. And until that changes, little else will.