A failed series of coordinated mail bombs targeting the “liberal establishment,” including the Obamas, the Clintons, Joe Biden, George Soros, CNN, former CIA director, John Brennan, Eric Holder, representative Maxine Waters, Robert De Niro among others in a still widening dragnet, was nothing short of an attempted democratic decapitation strike. A brazen act of domestic terrorism and political violence that has been emboldened by the continued corrosion of civility in public life. The U.S. has devolved into a red versus blue country and the failed mail bomb attacks could mark the beginning of even greater escalation and extremism if the public discord, vilification and incitement to violence are not quickly tempered and reversed.
No sooner than Cezar Sayoc, the so called MAGA bomber, was apprehended in Florida and images of his agitprop-laden white van circulated, a heinous antisemitic mass-shooting took place at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh claiming 11 lives. Here too, the root of this unspeakable evil is the combustible mix of conspiracy, freely available paramilitary weaponry blended with ethnic and religious hatred. In this type of tinder box, all that is needed is a little spark to set the powder keg of domestic political or ethnic violence and terrorism alight. From houses of worship like the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh to the Emmanuel A.M.E church in Charleston where 9 black worshipers where killed in a racially-charged massacre in 2015, to elementary schools like Sandy Hook and outdoor concerts in Las Vegas, all freedom-loving Americans are being strangled by the noose of hatred and wanton mass violence. It is beyond the time a new social compact is formed, where the tension between the freedom from violence is no longer trumped by the freedom to bear arms.
In the failed mail bombings, mercifully, the security apparatus guarding these high-profile individuals worked much better than the current state of political affairs and social cohesion in the U.S. The heightened state of tension, however, is but a symptom of the gradual normalization of political extremes, which has the natural tendency to spill over into acts of political violence, domestic terrorism, subversion and, as played out in this recent escalation, targeted political assassination attempts and hateful acts of mass violence. Not since the civil rights struggle, where race riots and assassinations gripped the nation, has the U.S. been in such a perilous state. Indeed, the normalization of hyper-partisanship has finally bled into the current tribalism where the country’s moto out of many, one is being replaced by a one-sided form of zero-sum progress. There is no “winning” at someone’s expense when we are all in the same boat.
The failed mail bombs mark a serious escalation, a punctuation mark even, on a series of increasingly extreme events that have become all too normal and common place. The public is inured to a 24-news cycle that is all about extremes, fear and loathing. Sheltering behind informational firewalls against a barrage of one-sided information bots in a social media maelstrom where there is a 1:1 ratio of real accounts to suspect ones. Sourcing a convenient version of the truth or who to blame is not difficult. Indeed, distorting this reality is part of a broad complot of mass psychological warfare against liberal democracies everywhere, for which the U.S. has been the largest theater of cyber warfare and our very tools, Twitter, Facebook and the news cycle, are being used against us by threats both domestic and foreign. What started off as a cold culture war, is bleeding into a hot social conflict. People are increasingly willing to carry out the dreadful acts in their imagination, from mailing pipe bombs to slaughtering innocent worshipers based on nothing other than their religion, color or in crimes of convenience, which was the tragic case at the First Baptist Church in Southerland Springs, Texas, where 26 worshipers were brutally gunned down and 20 others were injured in 2017.
The attempted political assassination of representative Gabrielle Giffords at a 2011 political event in Tucson, which claimed 6 lives and injured 15, or the attempted assassination of representative Steve Scalise, turning a congressional baseball friendly into a mass casualty crime scene, shows that these threats are not only moving down ballot, they are becoming more frequent and politicized. Just like how post-election violence gripped the otherwise peaceable nation of Kenya in 2007, politicians in an era of tribalism and zero-sum economic progress where “others” are blamed for a group’s lack of material advancement, have especially delicate powers. Through the lens of domestic political risk, we can already say that the U.S. is no longer a stranger to the types of domestic trespasses we used to admonish emerging and developing countries to avoid. Persistent attacks on a free press, exhortations of violence at political rallies, rolling street fights between politically opposed fringe groups and straining checks and balances on political power are not only common place, they are expected. Left unchecked the U.S. is beginning to look more and more like an emerging market (a place where politics matters more than macroeconomic forces), than an advanced nation.
What all of this negates, as does the current tone and tenor of political rhetoric, is that domestic tensions are indeed borne from a deeper wellspring of mistrust that clouds the ever-fleeting American Dream. The current tribal state of politics is a symptom of the underlying erosion in U.S. economic competitiveness. The short-term view to embrace the country’s distant past and moribund industries in lieu of confronting the current obstacles that obstruct a brighter future is only exacerbating the problems. The tempo of short-term politics measured in electoral cycles is disconnected from the decades-long priorities that should set the national agenda, investments and timeline. What candidate could run on ending the educational ZIP-code lottery that plagues the entire country, hitting the often ideologically opposed urban and rural poor the hardest? What candidate can acknowledge the fundamental economic inequality of a country blessed with such an embarrassment of riches, while 40% of the population cannot withstand a $400 financial setback? What candidate will prioritize bridges and modern infrastructure over walls, laying down the commons on which a modern economy can thrive?
Compared to other advanced economies, U.S. spending on education is in decline while expecting the most from its labor force and people. Indeed, across the country a largely privatized prison system enjoys 3 times more spending per capita on inmates than a public education system spends on pupils, which averages $11,762. Meanwhile algorithmic hiring processes exclude people without basic college degrees, let alone post-graduate education from even reaching the bottom rung on the social mobility ladder. These rungs are not only growing further and further apart, the sides that hold them together are greased by the trap of massive student debt that threatens to become the next financial crisis, leaving millions of hopes, dreams and retirement plans in tatters.
Hopeless nations clamor for a better past. Prepared civil societies reinvent themselves, confront often difficult realities with purpose and set a vision for the future, which is not an “I win at your expense” proposition, but one in which all ships can rise, and diverse people row in a common direction. Imagine an enlisted civilian corps of youth from all stripes having to devote 2-years of their lives to going somewhere in the country they have never been to do meaningful work for student loan forgiveness. We would find more in common than divides us or than our political process and tribal rhetoric let on. As with all young countries, while progress lurches forward, the darker demons of our past try to claw us back. These demons sent mail bombs not to the so-called liberal elite, but to all of us who care about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These demons slay innocent worshipers in their hallowed halls because of their religion or complexion. We cannot let these forces win the day nor alter our individual ambitions, civility and common ground because the future of the country is at stake.
