The horrific attempted assassination of Donald Trump a week ago today led to predictable accusations from Republicans that Democrats and liberals, by engaging in fierce rhetoric against Trump's candidacy, had somehow caused this violence. And while I find this take annoying, it is far from the worst possible form that the conservative response could have taken. I would prefer this accusation to conspiracy theories alleging that Democratic leadership literally plotted to abet the assassination (which I feared at first would be the knee-jerk Trumpist response).
And the allegation that Democrats "caused" the assassination attempt, by their vehement criticism of Trump's record and policy agenda, may have even had a beneficial indirect effect. It led to a sort of de-escalatory arms race, in which both parties competed with each other—at least for a few days—to see who could "lower the temperature" fastest and reclaim the moral high ground by offering a message of "unity" (though Trump appears to have officially called an end to the truce, with his return to extremist and demagogic rhetoric at his RNC speech).
But even if one approves its effects—and prefers the "Democrats' rhetoric was too incendiary" take over some of the conceivable alternatives we might have expected—nevertheless, it is rather rich coming from conservatives. After all, the RNC speeches were full of extremist rhetoric—from talk of a "migrant invasion" to echoes of "Great Replacement" theory—that has inspired mass shootings in the past (such as the killings in El Paso and Pittsburgh). Democratic politicians have also been targets of political violence that was linked to incendiary rhetoric; etc.
So, there is a certain element of the pot calling the kettle black here, of course. This becomes all the more glaring in the case of some of the most high-profile people pushing the "Dems are to blame" narrative. J.D. Vance, for one, posted on social media shortly after the assassination attempt that "The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist" and claimed this argument "led directly" to the shooting. Yet, Vance himself famously compared Trump to Hitler in 2016. By sending that text, did he also "directly cause" the assassination?
It's a key tenet of modern First Amendment law that we actually can't regard political speech of this sort—however impassioned—as "directly causing" violence. It is true that there are categories of speech—including incitement and threats—that are not protected by the First Amendment. But, according to all modern precedents on the subject from the Supreme Court, a statement needs to be much more proximate in space and time—and much more narrowly targeted—in order to qualify as "incitement." A general political statement, however strongly worded, does not qualify.
Of course, Vance has shown before that he is not too particular about the niceties of the First Amendment. After Robert Kagan published an essay in the Washington Post late last year that was highly critical of Trump, Vance fired off a letter to the Justice Department arguing that Kagan should be prosecuted for "incitement to insurrection." This is a bafflingly flawed legal argument that bears no resemblance to modern First Amendment jurisprudence; but it revealed that Vance perhaps does not care very much whether he violates the Constitution (one of several times he was shown the same).
Even if impassioned political rhetoric cannot be prosecuted as "incitement" or "sedition," however—at least not on contemporary understandings of the Bill of Rights—there remains the question of whether it bears some moral culpability nonetheless as a contributing factor to this violence. Answering this question would require more empirical work than I am able to do at present—but I suspect the answer is no. My guess is that impassioned political views correspond to actual violence about as often as sexual fantasies do to their literal enactment—as in, no more than would be predicted by random chance.
But of course, it should not surprise us that Vance is unconcerned with whether his arguments are logically consistent, principled, or grounded in the Constitution. He has made hypocrisy his calling card. Byron's indictment of humankind in generation—"thy tongue hypocrisy," "thy friendship all a cheat"—seems specially suited to Vance, whose entire career has been an elaborate fabrication. He did not grow up as a "hillbilly," but as a resident of suburban Ohio. He is not a "blue collar" hero, but attained financial and political success through the standard elite professional ladder.
One may protest—but he was a veteran who graduated from a state school when he was at Yale Law School, so he must have felt like an outsider! My friends who have attended Yale Law School assure me, though, that this is the standard profile of a person who attends that venerable institution. They are all engaged in posturing in one way or another as more "authentic" and blue collar than one another; and veterans have a major affirmative action boost in admissions. In short, Vance has simply been making the same insincere humblebrag that everyone at the top Ivies adopts.
But—you may protest further—he at least did have a hardscrabble upbringing and overcame personal tragedy. And indeed, I'm sure it was awful to have a family member struggling with addiction. But I can't admire the fact that Vance paraded his family's most disgraceful episodes before the public in order to cast himself as an underdog hero and profit off of their dirty laundry. Vance at the RNC this past week made a point of showcasing his mother in the audience—more dishonesty; for he has always told his family's story in a way that casts her as the villain, and himself as the blameless hero.
Hypocrisy, arrogance, and disloyalty, then, would seem to be the unholy trinity that makes up Vance's character. One wonders what could turn someone that way, but at the RNC, I think we caught a hint. During his speech, Vance's face would undergo a change from his pasted-on smile to a vacant expression. In these moments, one could see it in his eyes. On some level, he knows that he is a fraud, whose back story is mostly confabulated. And so, to escape this knowledge, he has projected it onto the country. As a character in an E.E. Cummings poem says: "Not I am a fake,but America’s phoney!"
Thus, he has concluded that the country can be taken for a ride. If he has spent his whole life faking it and conning people, he assumes that is what everyone else is doing as well. The Constitution? The Bill of Rights? So many Potemkin villages, in Vance's eyes. Since he has never let his own principles guide his life, he assumes that they have never guided the country's either. This is the real meaning of his claim in the RNC speech that America is not an "idea" or an "abstraction." Vance is projecting. His own commitment to democracy was always paper-thin, so, he assumes, so must be the country's.
A life-long grifter can only see in the country's promise as a whole nothing but a grift. We should not be surprised, then, when Vance behaves hypocritically. The best we can do is ignore him—and prevail at the ballot box in November.
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