"Responsible Rhetoric for Thee But Not for Me"
A horseshoe theory for "existentially consequential" elections.
I haven’t been shy about suggesting that the next Presidential election and, more specifically, the present Republican primary will be extremely consequential. But I have pushed back consistently, ever since I first began commenting on political issues back in 2016, against the various claims that any given election is “existentially consequential.” As I’m fond of paraphrasing George Washington from the musical Hamilton, our Republic has been through a lot, it can take it.
And it’s very important for Americans to believe that the Republic is strong enough to weather the results of free and fair elections. All around the world, we see that the collapse of democracy in society usually comes far more rarely from the direct actions of any given leader and far more often from the collapse of public order in the wake of an election that a large portion of that society refuses to accept. January 6th is an indicator of how such crises of legitimacy can threaten a nation.
And so, when I hear various Never Trump former Republican officeholders, such as Liz Cheney, suggest that if Donald Trump were to be re-elected, it “may mean the last election that you ever get to vote in,” I get very, very frustrated. It suggests to me a serious misunderstanding of the very real concerns Trump presents to America, and disturbingly demonstrates the reality of a kind of horseshoe theory in the spectrum of Trump support and Trump opposition, with the vociferously anti-Trump bending toward the same rhetoric and histrionic political engagement as those they so ardently oppose.
The seeds of January 6th were planted by Michael Anton’s Flight 93 Election essay. The image brought to mind, unavoidably, by using Flight 93 as a political metaphor is the idea that the plane (our government) is about to crash, and we have to storm the cabin, by whatever means necessary, to save the plane from destruction.
Of course, the essay, as originally penned, was a justification to vote for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, but the logical genesis of this line of thought has a clear through-line to what happened on January 6th. If you really believe that the very existence of our form of government hinges upon the result of a single election, then storming the cockpit, or storming the Capitol, when you lose seems an obvious thing to do.
Perhaps Liz Cheney spent so much of her time trying to pin responsibility for January 6th on Donald Trump’s shoulders that she failed to consider the realities of human nature and the kind of rhetoric that feeds the fear, anxiety, and existential dread that would lead people to do what they did on that dark day.
That Liz Cheney is willing to engage in the same existentially consequential rhetoric, the same fear-mongering, and the same anxiety-inducing paranoia that Trump and his enablers engaged in, that built up to the crescendo of Jan. 6, suggests she has not learned the lesson of Jan. 6 and, apparently, neither have most Americans.
Justin Stapley received his Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from Utah Valley University, with emphases in political philosophy, public law, American history, and constitutional studies. He is the Founding and Executive Director of The Freemen Foundation as well as Editor in Chief of the Freemen News-Letter. @JustinWStapley