History reveals the unpredictability of political rage

The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on Saturday carried with it a kind of sick inevitability, the feeling that we as a nation had been inexorably drifting toward this point for more than a decade. U.S. Reps. Steve Scalise and Gabby Giffords were wounded by gunfire in 2017 and 2011 respectively. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was targeted in a 2020 kidnapping plot. The attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, cost the lives of at least seven.

Unbalanced people with guns have imbibed deeply in the toxic waters of our nation’s political dialogue and decided to take matters into their own hands. We cannot countenance such violence. The end of a gun means the end of democracy as we know it.

At the same time, the attempt on Trump’s life cannot and should not stop criticism of the former president’s campaign or the plans his allies have outlined for a second term. Bad actors will frame criticism of Trump as support for a would-be assassin. Dissent is patriotic, and voicing your desire for a better country must remain protected speech. Folks across the political spectrum of our country understand this.

Here is what I don’t know, informed by the past two centuries of Kansas history: Anything else.

I do not know what the assassination attempt will mean for the presidential race. Neither does anyone else in the news media, regardless of the authority with which they say it.

I do not know what such violence means for us as a country or state. I don’t know what it means for our collective future. Neither does anyone else, regardless of their professional expertise as academics or politicians or lobbyists or opinion editors. Such experience helps illuminate possible paths, but it cannot tell us which one people will choose.

In moments of crisis, we seek both reassurance and authority. We want to know what’s coming so that we can prepare. As such, volume predominates. Poor-quality information and commentary spreads far and wide as pompous windbags pontificate, meeting market demand for easy answers. Dismiss them. Tune out the noise. Be careful about what news sources you read, what social media channels you access.

Kansas’ past demonstrates the futility of predicting the results of political violence.

In 2009, Wichita abortion provider George Tiller was gunned down his own church. The state continued to debate reproductive freedom, with anti-choice voices only growing in power and influence. Only in 2022 did the state’s populace render a definitive verdict on the issue. Conservative politicians still haven’t let up in the two years since.

A firebombing at the University of Kansas Student Union caused nearly a million dollars in damages in April 1970.

“The conflagration was the culminating act in a day of mayhem and a week of civil unrest in Lawrence, a period some have called the ‘Days of Rage’ that included racial confrontations, student protests, bomb threats, arson, and incidents of sniper fire directed at firefighters,” wrote William Towns.

Yet despite that furor, the campus eventually returned to normal, with the union rebuilding and reopening. The culprit was never found.

For context, both the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated in 1968, signifying a dangerous and conflicted era.

A sign quoting John Brown is seen on March 7, 2023, inside the Kansas Statehouse. The sign is part of an exhibit about Bleeding Kansas. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

Digging even further into the past, Kansas as a state arose during a fervent conflict over slavery. From 1855 to 1859, 55 people were killed during the period of guerrilla warfare dubbed “bleeding Kansas.” We entered the union as a free state in 1861, but the bloody national Civil War followed. Scholars now believe that roughly 750,000 Americans died.

What made recent unrest different from that of the 1850s and 1860s? Why did some violence beget more violence while other destruction simply fizzled out?

University of Massachusetts, Lowell, professor Arie Perliger spoke to The Conversation website on Saturday and offered a handful of clues.

“Democracy cannot work if the different parties, the different movements, are not willing to work together on some issues,” he said. “Democracy works when multiple groups are willing to reach some kind of consensus through negotiations, to collaborate and to cooperate.”

He continued: “What we’ve seen in the last 17 years, basically since 2008 and the rise of the Tea Party movement, is that there’s increasing polarization in the U.S. … We are forcing out any politicians and policymakers who are interested in collaboration with the other side. That’s one thing. Second, people delegitimize leaders who are willing to collaborate with the other side, hence, presenting them as individuals who betrayed their values and political party. And the third part is that people are delegitimizing their political rivals. They transform a political disagreement into a war in which there is no space for working together to address the challenges they agree are facing the nation.”

To me, Perlinger’s words suggest that while Kansas has seen violence and disagreements in recent decades, it has also been willing to address them through democratic means. When we turn our back on those institutions and the systems they establish, we raise the chance of bloodshed and turmoil unfolding in unpredictable ways.

I don’t know what happens now. Not for Trump, not for the presidential campaign, not for the United States, not for Kansas.

But I do know that our country will decide on the path forward. Let us choose wisely.

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.