We’re just over one month out from former President Donald Trump inciting a violent insurrection attempt at the U.S. Capitol, and we’re still only beginning to understand the full extent of the damage wrought by the MAGA movement’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
There’s the immediate effect, of course: the death and destruction and political consequences to be faced (or not) by those responsible for the events of Jan. 6. And then there are the longer, more subtle ways the insurrection — and the broader environment that allowed the bigotry, proto-fascism, and ultra-nationalism therein to take root — has warped the American political landscape.
Take, for instance, the most overt eruption of political violence in the United States in decades — one that enjoys an astonishing amount of support from Republicans, who see the use of force as a legitimate means “to arrest the decline of the traditional American way of life.” While a new study from the conservative American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life found that only 36% of the general public agrees with the statement “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it” that number leapt to 55% among Republicans — a sign of just how prevalent the undercurrent of violence is in certain segments of the country. Continue reading.
