Will Trump in the Slammer Ignite Civil War or Restore Sanity to Our Politics?
Indicting Trump may well lead to mass violence. But doing nothing would be much more damaging to the country in the long run.
There’s been a lot of speculation over the past several years on the chances of the United States careening into another civil war. A recent Economist/YouGov poll shows that 43 percent of Americans believe civil war is at least somewhat likely in the next ten years, while 35 percent say it is not likely, and 22 percent are unsure. Another survey reveals that 20 percent of American adults — around 50 million people — would be willing to condone political violence. “The prospect of large-scale violence in the near future is entirely plausible,” the surveyors warn. I, myself, warned back in 2017 that the country could slide into widespread civil strife, albeit in the form of “urban riots as opposed to armies clashing on a field of battle” à la Weimar Germany. This caught the eye of Charlie Cook, of The Cook Report, who commented, “Bruno’s words strike a chord today.”
But just how likely is it that Americans will turn on each other, specifically, over whether Donald Trump is indicted? Turning from the technocratic to the gaming realm, I checked on the odds bookies are waging. Sports bookies are now giving a 34.8 percent chance of Trump being indicted and a 69.2 percent chance of him skipping scot-free. They, in fact, have decreased the chance of Trump being charged by more than 8 percent since earlier this year — despite the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago and seizure of documents.
But maybe we’re looking at this all wrong. Rather than focus on the danger of violence if he is indicted, we should ponder the likelihood of unrest or domestic terrorism should he not be charged. American psychiatrist and expert on violence Bandy X. Lee argues that “doing nothing would be much more damaging to the country in the long run.”
Lee, who has done extensive research on prison gangs, maintains that holding Trump accountable for his criminal behavior could actually defuse the violent inclinations of his supporters. “I have found that once gang leaders are taken into custody, their followers soon stop believing in the delusions that they had all shared,” she says. “And their behavior often returns to normal.”
“Shared psychosis,” Lee says, is “a phenomenon where if you have an influential figure with severe symptoms, the symptoms actually spread to healthy individuals. . . And it most often happens in a family, where you have a severely ill person who has gone untreated who is a dominant person in the family. And it’s not the healthy people who get the sick person better. If you simply leave them alone, it’s the healthy individuals who eventually are almost bulldozed over with the symptoms, and then carry on the most bizarre delusions, and look like they have the exact same disorder that the primary individual has. But if you can distinguish who has the primary illness and separate them, usually hospitalize them, then the other family members return to normal. Now, I’ve seen this occur also in gangs and I believe that is what I am seeing with the nation.”
According to this interpretation, MAGA is the virus and Trump the spreader. Remove the latter and the former will dissipate, much as ridding rats ends bubonic plague.
“The cure is removal,” Lee stresses. “Then, quite dramatically, an entire afflicted family, street gang or prison cell-block that seemed almost ‘possessed’ returns to normal. Politicians seem to keep waiting for the public to propel his removal, but in reality removal will justify removal: Remove the president first, and the people will follow.”
Interesting theorem. Also, a high stakes one because never in our history have we faced the situation we are now in. Sectarianism leading up to the Civil War certainly. But not combined with a borderline insane recidivist criminal as president, with a Nosferatu-like grip over millions.
However, on a different level, there were two relevant 20th century examples that bear out Bandy Lee’s assertion.
Father Charles E. Coughlin was the Rush Limbaugh of the 1930’s. Known as “The Radio Priest,” he was a pioneer in employing radio to press a political agenda on a mass audience. During the 1930s, an estimated 30 million listeners, about a third of the adult population, tuned into his weekly broadcasts. His messaging was of an isolationist and conspiratorial bent, and, over time, increasingly pro-fascist. His populist radio rants appealed to millions of economically displaced and culturally unmoored Americans during the Great Depression. Among the elites, however, Coughlin was disparaged, with one magazine denouncing him as a “self-styled Messiah of the U.S. Lunatic Fringe.” But like his ideological descendant Limbaugh, the Radio Priest could command the attention, and fear, of politicians, including FDR.
He supported a White Christian nationalist group called the Christian Front until the FBI raided it in 1940 for conspiring to overthrow the government.
Coughlin overreached when he dove deep into anti-Semitism, stating, “When we get through with the Jews in America, they’ll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing.” The Roosevelt administration compelled the cancellation of his radio program and blocked distribution of his newspaper, while Catholic church leaders ordered him to cease his political activities, which he did. His followers lost interest in his right-wing populist views as world war loomed. Coughlin faded from the public arena, reverting to being a parish priest. He died in 1979 at age 88.
The other example is that of Senator Joe McCarthy. The infamous communist-baiter got away with his half-decade of political witch hunts precisely because Congress let him. The GOP leadership put McCarthy in charge of the Committee on Government Operations, which he used as his platform for persecuting members of the entertainment industry, the State Department and — culminating in his undoing — the U.S. Army. Some 300 entertainment figures were blacklisted and almost 3,000 government employees were forced from their jobs. The Foreign Service’s top China experts were purged from the State Department. McCarthy’s targeting of State rendered that agency demoralized and intellectually subdued for years. It took a single low-key attorney, Army general counsel Joseph Welch, to burst McCarthy’s bubble with a single poignant question, “Have you no sense of decency?” At the end of 1954, the Senate finally voted to condemn McCarthy for conduct “contrary to senatorial traditions.” With that, “McCarthyism” died and the madhattery the Wisconsin senator commanded over millions evaporated. His career ruined, McCarthy died from alcoholism in 1957, at age 48.
If Coughlin and McCarthy had been allowed to continue with their mendacity and hate-mongering unchecked, the nation’s democratic foundations might have crumbled. By the same token, allowing Trumpism to fester and grow unchallenged would invite the same. Ben Franklin warned us of this: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Of the three branches of government, the Executive and Legislative have failed us in bursting Trump’s bubble. The J6 Committee may bear fruit, but it is still too early to tell. The Judicial branch’s repeated foiling of Trump’s anti-democratic ploys in the courts, however, has been nothing short of chivalric. Rule of law holds steadfast. Imminent indictments of Trump and his henchmen will again test our nation’s viability as a democracy. Will Trump’s indictments and possible convictions lead to mass violence? Perhaps so. But “doing nothing would be much more damaging to the country in the long run.”
Fantastic article.