On the Brink of Anarchy?

The changing tide of political violence and what we can do to stem it

Last week we witnessed a stereotypical terrorist attack in New Orleans: an ISIS-inspired radical drove a truck into a crowd killing a bunch of innocent people and then engaged in a shootout with police before being killed.

A few hours later, a Tesla Cybertruck full of fireworks and gas canisters was ignited outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. Investigators immediately sought ties between the two incidents.

But the two incidents weren’t linked at all. The Cybertruck explosion was carried out by a 37 year old active duty Army Green Beret, Mathew Livelsberger, who spent his life fighting ISIS-inspired terrorists. If anything, the Tesla Cybertruck incident was linked– at least spiritually– to another recent high profile incident: Luigi Mangione’s murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

I wrote about what that assassination reveals about our politics last month. But the eerie similarity between both that assassination and the recent Cybertruck explosion is that the acts weren’t based on extreme ideology like the ISIS terrorists we are used to. No, the positions that Mangione and Livelsberger cited for their violent acts were, for lack of a better term, quite normal.

Sure, the pundits are saying Mangione is deranged and that Livelsberger was going through a mental health crisis, so we should just write them off as nutcases and move on. But writing something off as nutty or anomalous is a perilous thing to do, even if it might be true. So instead of doing that, let’s look at their self-described positions for their actions:

Mangione: “The reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it…. it is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently, I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”

Livelsberger: “We are being led by weak and feckless leadership who only serve to enrich themselves” and “This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wake up call. Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence. What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives.”

Does any of this sound familiar? Wealth inequality, corporate greed and violence, the richest and most powerful people taking advantage of everyone else. Again, these aren’t ISIS extremists or radicals. These are Ivy League kids and lifelong soldiers with mainstream positions– positions that a vast swath of the public from both parties hold– perhaps reaching crisis points, and then acting on them.

Another thing their acts have in common? It doesn’t look like these two intended to threaten the general public. In fact, both appear to have thought they were doing our country and the everyday people living here a favor.

Mangione killed one very specific person to make his statement. Livelsberger also killed one person, himself, in what he called a “spectacle” that was clearly designed to be very flashy but wasn’t very destructive.

Some people think Livelsberger’s explosion was a failure:

“The level of sophistication is not what we would expect from an individual with this type of military experience,” said Kenny Cooper, a special agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Maybe it was a failure. But it’s also possible that it worked exactly as he planned: a fiery spectacle that didn’t really hurt anyone else but brought attention to his death and grievances. It sure doesn’t seem like this guy wanted to be a villain based on what he wrote. He was broken up about civilian casualties in Afghanistan. And this is what his ex-girlfriend had to say about him:

"I just want everyone to know that Matt was the kindest man I ever knew," Arritt told the Gazette, explaining that Livelsberger bought her a house when her mother became ill. "He got me through a difficult time” and “I never saw him angry or act impulsively and he was always thoughtful in the things he did. He was always the first person to jump into battle and stand up for someone else."

What he appears to have wanted was what Mangione appears to have wanted, for his life (and in this case death) to make a statement, which is corroborated by the fact that he sent a letter/manifesto to someone with a platform before the incident even happened.

The insanity of all of this mixed in with the current polarized and fervent political climate? America went through a time just like it in the past! Maybe we can learn something from that.

In the late 1800’s wealth inequality was skyrocketing, workers were organizing for power against an elite profit-maximizing class, and political polarization was at a zenith. As a result, people caught political fever, and it became contentious. Check out how familiar this description of the late 1800’s sounds:

“Such public politics became, in the words of one comedian, “our great American game.” Political rancor grew precipitously. Saloons resounded with heated debates. On train cars, Americans took straw polls to see how strangers would vote. At dinner tables, families bonded—or broke up—debating an upcoming race. Even when exhausted Americans threw down their newspapers, they looked up only to find partisan broadsides slathered on every wall. “Ignorance is bliss now,” complained one woman as she canceled her political newspapers, weary of the whole spectacle.”

Did you know that the highest sustained participation in elections, something we are seeing a surge in right now, was actually during the late 1800’s?

Elections were also closer than ever before. No president in this period came to office by winning a majority of the popular vote.

At the same time, workers who were tired of being abused started fighting for an 8 hour work week. Anarchism and “propaganda of the deed,” like what Mangione and Livelsberger did, proliferated.

And some of them even became martyrs, like Mangione and Livelsberger appear to aspire to. For example, in 1886 Chicago, “a rally at Haymarket Square was organized by labor radicals (note: their word, and one often chosen by those who take more than their share to label those who want a fair piece of it) to protest the killing and wounding of several workers by the Chicago police during a strike the day before at the McCormick Reaper Works.”

When police arrived at the rally to disperse the crowd, someone threw a bomb at the officers. Mayhem ensued, and in “August 1886, eight men labeled as anarchists were convicted in a sensational and controversial trial in which the jury was considered to be biased and no solid evidence was presented linking the defendants to the bombing.”

Most were hanged, but they are remembered, and despite being called anarchists, they are not remembered in a bad light. Quite the opposite, in fact. There is a memorial to them standing in Chicago today that is listed on the National Parks Service website.

Political violence was everywhere during this time. On average, a sitting US Congressman was murdered every seven years. Two presidents were assassinated, in 1881 and 1901.

We are there again. Multiple assassination attempts on a (former) President and presidential candidate. Propaganda of the deed proliferating with Mangione and Livelsberger. And political polarization and doubts in democracy everywhere.

Have you heard someone say that democracy is failing because people are stupid? (Come on, you’ve probably thought that yourself) Or that dumb and uneducated people have more children than smart people so we are doomed?

Here is a quote from an 1878 treatise on the failure of democracy by Francis Parkman, an elite of the era, bemoaning the growing democratic power of the lower classes:

“It is aggravated by the fact, generally acknowledged "by those most competent to judge of it,” that intellectual development and high civilization are not favorable to fecundity, so that the unintelligent classes, except when in actual destitution, multiply faster than those above them. Thus the power of ignorance tends to increase, or rather the power of the knaves who are always at hand to use it.”

Jon Grinspan, of the National Museum of American History, whose article I quoted a couple of times above, lists even more similarites:

“Others attacked the rising immigration rates, like Francis Willard, the leader of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, who blamed America’s out-of-control politics on “alien illiterates.” Others still aimed (more accurate) attacks at railroads, corporations, robber barons and lobbyists who seemed to be buying up America. The muckraking reporter Henry Demarest Lloyd wrote that “liberty produces wealth, and wealth destroys liberty.”

So how did this era end and is there anything we can learn from it?

According to Jon, the political and voting fervor began to die down as those in charge stifled voting access in order to decrease turnout. Which, you can see in the turnout chart above, appears to have had the intended result.

At the same time, however, labor unions started winning 8 hour workdays left and right, antitrust laws were passed and enforced, and a feeling of fairness started to return the country. In short, normal people started getting results and maybe weren’t as interested in politics anymore.

So, if we want to move on from this, and not fall into twenty years of political strife and violence, perhaps the best way to do that is to make things fair again. To get big money out of politics and government, to pass laws so that insurance companies can’t reject bionic arms for little girls, and otherwise bring a sense of fairness back to America.

Or, maybe some level of anarchy inevitable?

What do you think?

As always, please let me know in the comments, I do read them all! And, also as always, if you have the capacity to support our work, you can become a paid subscriber here.

Until next time.

Lucas