A PRRI survey out Wednesday shows that nearly a quarter of Americans support political violence heading into the 2024 presidential election, as an overwhelming majority believe democracy is at risk.
A PRRI survey out Wednesday shows that nearly a quarter of Americans support political violence heading into the 2024 presidential election, as an overwhelming majority believe democracy is at risk.
The question that really needs to be asked is one capable of meaningfully distinguishing between those who support “resorting to” offensive violence in order to “save” the country from policy they don’t like that was accomplished through legitimate means, and those who support legitimately resorting to defensive violence to save the country from the first group.
Good luck crafting such a question in such a way that the first group doesn’t misrepresent themselves as belonging to the second, though.
The weird thing is that I’d bet a lot more people support some type of violence in order to reform all of our broken systems that clearly aren’t being fixed by merely voting and protesting.
But the reasons for why our systems are broken are wildly different depending on which side of the political spectrum you fall on.
The Jan 6 insurrectionists were completely misguided, but they’d see a similar insurrection in support of reforming US government systems as an attack on the country itself, just as they are viewed by others.
How do we fix our problems when we can’t even agree on what the problems actually are?