Scraping Advantage Off a Crime Scene Floor

By Noah Rothman

Monday, October 31, 2022

 

There’s a terrible rhythm to how we react to episodes of violence with a political dimension. Paul Pelosi’s brutal assault is no different.

 

Targeted, premeditated attacks like this one, we soon learn, are cooked up in an addled mind, but something as unsatisfying as madness fails to suffice for a motive. So, we go about the flawed human practice of seeking patterns and applying rationality to the irrational. In this ritual, we exercise the agency chaos has otherwise stolen, even if it usually manifests in the unconstructive practice of assigning blame for violence to the non-violent.

 

From what we know of Paul Pelosi’s alleged attacker, the preponderance of evidence indicates that he was a sick man. The paranoia to which he was attracted of late has an unmistakably rightwing flavor. He seems enticed by the collection of lunatic conspiracy theories espoused by disciples of “QAnon,” which the Associated Press summarizes as “the belief that the country is run by a deep state cabal of child sex traffickers, satanic pedophiles, and baby-eating cannibals.” This was, however, a recent conversion. His neighbors describe the alleged assailant as a transient drug addict, well-known around infamously left-wing Berkeley, California as a pro-nudity activist and a “hemp jewelry maker.” His online activities include a variety of anti-Semitic themes, which is a common feature of the psychologically deranged, whatever their politics.

 

This presents a maddening conundrum. When America’s mental-health crisis is discussed at all, it is either an intractable Gordian Knot or another example of how America just won’t throw enough money at its problems. Irresponsible conspiracy peddlers in media and politics display no sense of accountability. They’re not listening to these admonitions, nor are their audiences. The only people listening to reason, in fact, are the reasonable. So, that’s who you must train your fire on.

 

In Politico, reporters Sarah Ferris and Jeremy White point an accusatory finger at Republican ad makers, who may have contributed to the violent mania exhibited by Pelosi’s alleged assailant by crafting messages critical of the Democratic Speaker of the House in an election year. The article notes that Republican committees and candidates have used Pelosi as a foil for well over a decade—a fact the reporters believe supports rather than disputes the notion that this year’s fare crossed a line.

 

“The attack on Paul Pelosi is becoming the latest inflection point in an American political discourse that’s grown exponentially coarser since Republicans first embraced Nancy Pelosi as an attack-ad bogeywoman,” Politico asserted. The Democratic lawmakers the outlet quotes place the blame at the feet of Donald Trump and the Republican political “machine,” which “led directly to this attack.” The president himself echoed these sentiments within hours of the attack on Pelosi.

 

This attempt at advantage-seeking in the wake of this episode of violence is as familiar as it is sordid. It’s precisely what the New York Times editorial board engaged in when it alleged that a paranoid schizophrenic with a deluded grudge against English grammar shot Rep. Gabby Giffords because Sarah Palin’s PAC placed “Democrats under stylized cross hairs.” It’s of a piece with the efforts to establish a causal relationship between “martial metaphors” and attempted murder. That is a source of psychological comfort, insofar as those are things that are at least theoretically within our control. As a bonus, it is also a tool of political utility.

 

It would be nice if we had a more responsible political class (though the dominant figures in 2010 were more responsible by any definition, and that didn’t stop the commentariat from blaming everyone but the violent for their violence). There was no time in American history when our politics were unsullied by notions that a secret cabal is plotting against the public interest, but it would be great if American political life weren’t as conspiratorial as it is today. We know that radical notions can radicalize the disturbed, and we’ve seen a lot of radicalizations recently; only some of them right-wing.

 

The would-be gunman who was charged with the attempted murder of Supreme Court Justice Bret Kavanaugh was moved to violence by apocalyptic rhetoric around the Court’s rulings on abortion and gun rights. But that episode was “not especially hair-raising,” and it inspired no soul-searching.

 

When one of Marco Rubio’s campaign canvassers was beaten to the point of hospitalization, reportedly, “because he was a Republican,” Florida Democrats said the staffer’s history was perhaps behind the attack. He was “a misogynist and a racist,” a “white supremacist,” someone with a “history of being tied to hatred and bigotry,” and who should be “condemned” by the campaign that hired him.

 

The man who almost killed a number of Republican members of Congress in 2017 populated his social-media accounts with eschatology that Donald Trump’s presidency would supposedly fulfill. In 2020, American cities burned over the conspiratorial notion that the United States is founded in evil and remains wholly dedicated to the subjugation of its minority population. This year, dozens of pro-life pregnancy centers have been targeted with violence over the notion that their “campaign of oppression” is an existential threat.

 

Some of these conspiracy theories are more fashionable than others, but they are all poison. We should demand more seriousness and sobriety from our representatives. But even if a better politics were bestowed upon us tomorrow, it wouldn’t rid us of the violently mentally disturbed. It would, however, prevent our political actors from leveraging acts of violence to squeeze out whatever political rewards bloodshed provides the unscrupulous. As the attack on Paul Pelosi suggests, we’re a long way off from that.