Political Nationalization Kills
Concentrated power and expectations - not division or rhetoric - is harming democracy.
The assassination attempt on Donald Trump this weekend at a campaign rally in western Pennsylvania continues to be investigated. As political figures on both sides, including President Joe Biden and influential Democrats, condemn the political violence over the weekend, one of the angles inevitably being pursued within the narrative journalism world is one of root causes. Pundits who spend much of their time pointing out the hypocrisies of the other side are universally convinced that the rhetoric and existential narratives over the end of democracy that animate both camps are the culprit. President Biden implored Americans to “lower the temperature” in his televised remarks from the Oval Office this weekend. Recent essays have compelled Americans to “lower the volume” and have observed how “a shooting can change a nation.” These takes are missing the point.
If one spends all their waking days contemplating American politics from a purely national frame it’s not hard to see why someone might over look political nationalization.
We know instances, attempts, or depictions of political violence seem to have increased particularly over the last eight years. In 2017, a Bernie Sanders supporter shot and wounded Representative Steve Scalise. The following year, a Trump supporter was arrested for mailing pipe bombs to prominent Democrats, including former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, as well as to CNN’s New York office. In 2020, social justice riots broke out across the country, killing dozens and causing a record amount of property damage of $2 billion. Six months later, rioters stormed the federal Capitol to disrupt the presidential vote-counting proceedings. Later that year, Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona tweeted a video of an animation depicting him striking Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a sword. The following year, an assassination attempt on federal Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was intercepted by authorities. And now, a former president has been targeted.
Political violence will find its way where power is concentrated and where recourse is nonexistent. If everything seems to hinge on one election of one person or one level of government, the truest believers will act accordingly. The unspoken culprit that places American democracy at risk in turn is the power, influence, and expectations of the presidency and the federal government.
Psychologist Peter Turchin writes in his book Ages of Discord that "the over-centralization of political authority in the hands of the president contributes to a volatile political climate. When the public perceives the president as failing to meet their impossibly high standards, it breeds frustration and anger, which can manifest as political violence." The interwoven dynamics of political nationalization, federalization, and the standards placed on the presidency create a political environment where the stakes are perceived to be extraordinarily high. What we get are ever greater odds that we see more political violence.
I started this newsletter in part to underscore the risks associated with centralized power. As I wrote upon the launch, I wanted to confront the most entrenched axiom in American politics that says that what we call democracy should be sought through a national narrative or the federal government. This political nationalization, what I called “a totalizing preoccupation with national conformity where the absence of consensus is mistaken for existential dysfunction,” is the dreadful trigger of our current moment.
Polarization and division are so often lamented because they are so often presumed to imbue aggression and antagonism. In a healthy federated democracy, the stakes of American politics would be distributed across the states in a sustainable form of division. Local civic engagement would not only be encouraged but these institutions would be empowered to sustain the pluralism that fewer people in higher places cannot. We could unite under the broadest of principles and divide ourselves into the states and cities we call home. Yet, this is not the vision of America the our political media nor many of our political leaders share. Instead, what we have are the adverse forms of polarization and antagonistic division that intensify partisan divides, leading to a zero-sum mentality where every election is perceived as a battle for the nation’s soul.
To act and inform as though presidential elections, as our media institutions uniformly do, are not simply an election of one president but a comprehensive referendum on the nation’s future, a meaningful barometer of the nation’s “mood” (whatever that even means), and the expression of the people’s hopes and aspirations are the kinds of narratives that set expectations that are antithetical to the restraint intended for the presidency and for our system of dispersed self-government. The centuries-long trend of an emboldened executive — one that is at best an afterthought among people paid to check power — is bad for the long-term health of American democracy.
Just about every pundit, from left to right, will take from the assassination attempt on Donald Trump that the volume of the discourse, the passion of the rhetoric, the depth of the divisions, and the extremity of the polarization are fundamentally what led to this event. They will say it is because of who is wielding the power and how it is being wielded. It is not. The problem is where the power lies. This tragedy should remind of us.
That Patchwork is a first-of-its-kind newsletter about democracy, economics and culture from a decentralist angle. Today, fewer people are seeking more power over American life. To preserve a pluralist democracy will mean challenging the entrenched premise that observations, ideas and solutions are best made with a federal or national interest.