In a now iconic George Carlin “Take-Offs and Put-Ons” comedy routine, delivered during the height of the Cold War, news anchor “Bill Bulletin” declares, “Russia and the United States are at war. Missiles have been fired by both sides. Washington and Moscow are in flames. Details on these and other stories in just a moment — after this word about your complexion.”
Following a commercial for a skin care product, Mr. Bulletin returns to anesthetize his listeners: “Tonight, the world breathes a little easier as five more nations have signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Today’s signers were Chad, Sierra Leone, Monaco, Upper Volta, and Iceland.”
Much like George Carlin’s imagined audience in the 1960s, Americans in 2022 have learned that a war on democracy has begun, and far too few of them have made doing something to stop it a priority.
And with at least 345 election deniers on the ballot in the midterms — including candidates for governor, secretary of state, attorney general, and seats in the state legislature, who, if elected, will have a significant impact on how future elections are conducted and votes are counted — the doomsday clock is ticking.
In a poll conducted by the New York Times and Siena College, more than 70 percent of Americans agreed that democracy is at risk — but only 7 percent identified this issue as the most important challenge facing the country.
“If we are talking about having freedom, and that we get to have a say in our choices,” declared a 37-year-old Iowan, “then I think we still have that.” A 47-year-old Michigander is “far more concerned” about “policies that actually matter.”
That said, studies by the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats indicate that about 18 million Americans agree “the use of force is justified” to restore Donald Trump to the presidency: 8 million of them own guns; 2 million have served in the military; 6 million support militia groups like the Oath Keepers or extremist organizations like the Proud Boys.
According to surveys conducted by medical and public health scientists at the University of California Davis, about 7 million Americans believe political violence is “usually or always justified.” About 28 million claim they are willing to “threaten or intimidate,” 22 million to “injure,” and 18 million to “kill” someone to accomplish an important political goal.
And, perhaps most ominously, 42 percent of Americans — almost 100 million people — think that “having a strong leader for America is more important than having a democracy.”
In the five days following the FBI’s court-approved search of Mar-a-Lago for documents, many of them classified, removed from the White House by former president Trump, 15,000 tweets mentioned “a civil war.” On Aug. 11, 2022, a pro-Trump zealot wearing body armor and carrying an AR-15 style rifle, tried to shoot his way into an FBI building in Cincinnati, Ohio.
There has been a five-fold increase in recorded threats against members of Congress since 2016, with 9,625 in 2021 — including, of course, threats associated with the assault on the United States Capitol on Jan. 6; 75 people have been indicted for threatening lawmakers in the last five years — 1 in 10 of them for threats directed at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “I wouldn’t be surprised if a Senator or House member were killed,” U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said earlier this year. At the end of October, a man entered Pelosi’s home in California, intending to kidnap the Speaker and break her kneecaps. When the intruder discovered she was not there, he bludgeoned her husband with a hammer. Days after Paul Pelosi underwent brain surgery to repair a skull fracture, Donald Trump Jr. posted a meme mocking the assault.
In Arizona, armed and masked vigilantes wearing bulletproof vests are staking out ballot drop boxes and intimidating voters by taking videos of them and the license plates on their cars. Mark Finchem — the GOP candidate for secretary of state in Arizona, who believes Mike Pence was part of a coup to oust Donald Trump from the presidency — could, with the state legislature, overrule election results if elected; he has tweeted, “WATCH ALL DROP BOXES.” State sen. Kelly Townshend (R) told a conservative group she is pleased “to hear about all you vigilantes out there that want to camp out at the drop boxes.” Kari Lake, the GOP candidate for Arizona governor, has refused to say that she will accept the result of the 2022 election if the vote count doesn’t go her way.
It can happen here.
It is happening here.
And “the prospect of large-scale violence in the near future is entirely plausible,” the researchers at the University of California, Davis have concluded.
Once lost, democratic norms and institutions are very difficult to restore. The time to “stop the steal” — the real steal, not the groundless claims about fraud in the 2020 election — is now. It must begin by repudiating politically motivated violence, election deniers and enablers, and ending restrictions on — and intimidation of — all Americans who are qualified to vote.
Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He is the co-author (with Stuart Blumin) of “Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century.”