By Jim Geraghty
Thursday, June 09, 2022
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, while speaking on
the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court building, March 4, 2020:
I want to tell you [Justice]
Gorsuch, I want to tell you [Justice] Kavanaugh, you have unleashed the
whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go
forward with these awful decisions.
Chief Justice John Roberts, the following day:
Justices know that criticism comes
with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest
levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous. All
members of the court will continue to do their job, without fear or favor, from
whatever quarter.
In a subsequent statement responding to Roberts, Schumer
said his remarks “were a reference to the political price Senate Republicans
will pay for putting these justices on the court, and warning that the justices
will unleash a major grassroots movement on the issue of reproductive rights.”
But that ensuing spin was obviously a lie. Schumer didn’t threaten that Mitch
McConnell and other Senate Republicans would pay the price or wouldn’t know
what hit them; he specifically directed his remarks to Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.
The New York senator knew he had screwed up by directly threatening the
justices with harm, so he pretended he had not said what everyone had heard him
say. Few people in the national news really thought much of Schumer’s remarks,
and they were largely forgotten. Look at that date again — within a week or so,
the Covid-19 pandemic shut down the world.
But Schumer’s comment — spurred by a case involving a
Louisiana law that would restrict access to abortion services — looks
spectacularly reckless in light of Wednesday’s news:
A man with a gun and a knife was
detained by police early Wednesday near the Maryland home of Brett M. Kavanaugh
after making threats against the Supreme Court justice, according to local and
federal officials.
Nicholas John Roske, 26, of Simi
Valley, Calif., was charged with attempted murder of a Supreme Court justice
after he called authorities and said he was having suicidal thoughts and wanted
to kill a specific justice, according to federal prosecutors.
In September 2021, a mob of
pro-abortion protesters from “ShutDownDC” descended upon Justice
Kavanaugh’s home over the Texas abortion-law case. Then, we had the unprecedented
leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs, which
would overturn Roe v. Wade. In the aftermath, a pro-abortion group
“RuthSentUs” publicly shared maps to the homes of the six
Republican-appointed justices, and sent protests there to intimidate the justices.
We learned that “law enforcement agencies are investigating
social-media threats to burn down or storm the Supreme Court building and
murder justices and their clerks,” yet Democrats such as Schumer and Anne
Kuster dismissed the mob threat to the Court as no big deal. The Biden White
House pointedly refused to condemn either the leak or the targeting of homes, with Jen Psaki saying that
“the president’s view is that there’s a lot of passion, a lot of fear, a lot of
sadness from many, many people across this country about what they saw in that
leaked document” and that “I know that there’s an outrage right now, I
guess, about protests that have been peaceful to date, and we certainly do
continue to encourage that, outside judges’ homes, and that’s the president’s
position.” As protests escalated, churches were vandalized, and a Molotov
cocktail was thrown at a pro-life office, Psaki finally allowed that “that should never include
violence, threats, or vandalism. Judges perform an incredibly important
function in our society, and they must be able to do their jobs without concern
for their personal safety.”
Protests at a judge’s home are
already illegal under federal law, but the Biden administration made no move to
prosecute the protesters, again on the theory that breaking federal law in a
political protest in D.C. is no big deal. A bipartisan bill to beef up security
for the justices unanimously passed the Senate, but Nancy Pelosi blocked it in
the House. Meanwhile, violence by the group “Jane’s Revenge” has escalated,
including just last night, firebombing a crisis pregnancy center in Buffalo.
Yesterday, groups such as Ruth Sent Us revealed their
uncontrollable compulsion to announce to the world that they had learned
nothing from recent events — calling Kavanaugh “an abusive alcoholic” in their
“thoughts and prayers” tweet to Justice Kavanaugh and his wife, while
announcing that the Thursday “Voice Your Anger” protest directed at Justice Amy
Coney Barrett would continue to meet in front of Lemon Road Elementary School
in Falls Church, Va. Say, has anything happened lately that might make people
particularly worried about someone angry and potentially unhinged hanging
around an elementary school?
So why did Chuck Schumer, allegedly a smart man, use
those words back in March 2020?
Schumer felt he needed to look strong and tough and
emotionally aligned with the grassroots of his party. His audience hated Brett
Kavanaugh with a passion, and he feared the consequences of not echoing that
rage. And he simply didn’t bother to think through the potential consequences
of what he was saying. Once he did, he had enough wherewithal to recognize how
bad it looked, and thus he implausibly pretended he had been talking about
Republican senators instead.
Just about every bit of communication that reaches your
eyes or ears aims to elicit an emotional response. Advertisers, entertainers,
elected officials, political candidates, prime-time TV hosts, columnists, and
even morning-newsletter writers want you to feel some emotional response to
what they’re telling you. Sometimes, they want you to feel happy and laugh.
Sometimes, they share a sad story illustrating the unavoidable tragedies of
life. Sometimes, they want to spark curiosity and wonder.
But the two easiest emotional buttons to push are fear
and anger.
Those two emotions rise in us quickly and easily because
there is an evolutionary advantage to both. A person who feels fear will
recognize threats and danger and avoid them. A neurotic person is rarely happy,
and may in fact be miserable, but the one thing they can be assured of is that
they’re not likely to be blindsided by a problem. They’re always on alert for
signs that something is going wrong and something terrible is going to happen.
A person who feels anger often feels motivated to do something about a
problem. There are all kinds of bad consequences to excessive anger,
but those who are angry often feel a sense of temporary empowerment. They’re “mad as hell, and they’re not gonna take it anymore.” And
the world does not lack fearful threats or outraging injustices.
But both of those emotions are like fire: useful and even
necessary when kept under control and applied carefully and with limits,
extraordinarily dangerous when they spread out of control.
You’ve heard all the stories of fear and paranoia that
ran out of control and tore a community apart — the Salem Witch Trials, etc. We
have all witnessed the consequences of out-of-control anger — the enraged
protest that turns into a riot that harms the community the protesters
ostensibly intended to help.
True leadership means handling the public’s fear and
anger like nitroglycerin. You don’t just toss it around willy-nilly, and a
little bit goes a long way. In a better world, every elected official in the
U.S. would recognize the inherent danger in demonizing any individual or group.
Over and over again in our society, people choose to define groups by the worst
actions of relatively few individuals.
Not every illegal immigrant is a rapist — very few are,
in fact. This doesn’t mean that the ones who are shouldn’t be caught and
prosecuted, and this doesn’t mean we should just ignore our immigration laws.
But if a leader uses the terms “illegal immigrant” and “rapist” as synonyms,
people will start to treat the former like the latter.
Not every gun owner is a ticking time bomb of violent
rage. Not every young black man is a gang member. Not every moody teenager is
an aspiring school shooter.
Alas, we don’t have particularly responsible leaders, and
they see the fear and anger buttons as the easiest ways to build their support.
“Our political opponents are decent human beings and fellow citizens with some
wrongheaded ideas and an inaccurate sense of how the world works” just doesn’t
fire people up and get them eager to click, tune in, make donations, and vote.
What’s more, a lot of people out there are looking for
someone to hate, and politics gives them a convenient enemy — or perhaps more
importantly, a socially acceptable enemy.
It is very revealing to see who it is socially acceptable
to get mad at within the circles of American elites and who gets a pass. In
July 2013, Chelsea Manning was found guilty of 17 violations of the Espionage
Act — after pleading guilty to another ten! — and sentenced to 35 years in the
Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks. The former Army intelligence analyst
sent 750,000 classified or sensitive documents to WikiLeaks. By 2017, President
Obama had commuted Manning’s sentence and the convicted felon was enjoying a glamorous photoshoot in Vogue.
If you run around still fuming that Chelsea Manning
escaped the full consequences of violating a sacred oath and breaking a slew of
laws, a lot of people will look at you strangely. If you were ever supposed to
be angry about something like that, you’re not supposed to be angry anymore.
There are new allegedly horrible threats to society we’re all supposed to
scorn, like Gina Carano and Aaron Rodgers and Dave Chappelle and Dave Weigel.
Up until very recently, Elon Musk was the cool guy building rockets and
electric cars, but now he’s “dangerous,” according to Elizabeth Warren. Dangerous —
meaning we’re supposed to fear him.
In certain elite circles, it’s not just common but almost
required to rage at particular political figures — Brett Kavanaugh, Donald
Trump, Mitch McConnell, Ron DeSantis. It’s mostly Republicans, but you can
probably get away with raging at Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. (Clearly,
chasing Sinema into the bathroom isn’t considered extreme or unhinged behavior
in certain circles; in fact, it is seen as laudable, a demonstration of a
person’s devotion to the cause.) If your sensible white-collar neighbors, with
their “In This House We Believe” yard sign, know who Texas Democratic
representative Henry Cuellar is, it’s probably socially acceptable to rage and
fume at him, too. But you never want your object of hate to be too obscure. “No
H8,” except for when you’re really mad at a government official . . . or
members of the opposing party.
This is the consequence of runaway fear and anger. Your
political foes aren’t really seen as human beings anymore; they’re monsters.
Human beings, your fellow citizens, are entitled to some baseline level of
respect, even if you disagree strongly. Members
of the in-group must be treated one way, while we’re free to treat members
of the out-group any way we please.
But monsters? There’s nothing reasonable or
understandable about a monster. Monsters can’t be reasoned or negotiated with,
and it’s usually impossible to coexist with them. The only real long-term
solution to the threats and provocations of a monster is to destroy it.
The nutjob with a gun who took a cab to Kavanaugh’s house
yesterday — after finding the address online — was utterly convinced he was on
his way to slay a monster.
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