The volcano rumbles
An hour’s brisk walk can take you from Dunker Church, across “the cornfield” and down Bloody Lane all the way to Burnside Bridge—the key locations on the battlefield at Antietam, a little more than an hour’s drive from the U.S. Capitol and scene of the bloodiest single day for the American military in our history. Some 23,000 in blue or gray were killed or wounded or went missing during the grueling 12 hours of close combat at Sharpsburg, Md., on Sept. 17, 1862.
When pundits talk of a “cold civil war” in the country, they mark themselves as ignorant of the real thing. Far from real war, the civil tension in the country isn’t even close to 1960s levels of violence, much less the sort of actual war that once convulsed the country in the 1860s.
But some seem to welcome a slide in that direction. “Tell me again why we shouldn’t confront Republicans where they eat, where they sleep, and where they work until they stop being complicit in the destruction of our democracy,” tweeted Ian Millhiser, justice editor at ThinkProgress.
“Because it is both wrong & supremely dangerous,” replied Georgetown Law professor Randy Barnett. “When one side denies the legitimacy of good faith disagreement over policy— as well as over constitutional principle—the other side will eventually reciprocate. Neither a constitutional republic nor a democracy can survive that.”
Princeton’s much-admired political theorist Robert P. George said of the exchange: “Randy Barnett drops a major truth bomb in response to an especially foolish and irresponsible tweet. We’re already in the orange zone of bitterness and hatred of citizens toward fellow citizens. We’re about to enter the red zone. This is how faction destroys democratic republics.”
The daily ratcheting-up of rhetoric is driving people away from ordinary political conversation. It is too freighted with potential for disproportionate responses to talk candidly about such things as one’s views of the Kavanaugh hearings. The intentional release of senators’ home addresses by someone there is reason to believe is a Capitol Hill staffer—“doxing”—is an ominous step in the Millhiser direction. It is a step back toward the tragedy that unfolded only last year when a deranged Bernie Sanders supporter tried to gun down the GOP caucus at baseball practice.
Its cause is the retirement of a Supreme Court justice who was appointed by a Republican president, and his imminent replacement by a Supreme Court justice nominated by a Republican president. Though Donald Trump is not anyone’s idea of a conventional president, Judge Brett Kavanaugh is not only extraordinarily qualified but also a deeply conventional choice. So when arguments about process failed, that part of the left that demands power above all other things turned to character assassination.
A vast swath of the public has concluded that the Democrats sat on an explosive charge until the last minute, and they imagine themselves being ambushed that way at work. They don’t want their daughters and sons to live in a society where allegation is conviction.
Media elites locked inside “blue bubble” newsrooms don’t see, hear or feel it. Just as they didn’t see, hear, or feel the 2016 volcano’s rumblings, either.