Only in recent months, Trump himself was the victim of a Homicide attempt ; the residence of the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro it was deliberately burned; The family of Nancy Pelosi one of the main figures of the Democratic Party, also suffered an attack in his house, and two legislators of Minnesota They suffered an attack with a firearm (one of them died and the other was injured).
They are just some illustrative, non -exhaustive examples of recent attacks motivated by political causes in the United States. Some American experts They argue that “lonely wolves” have carried out all these attacks: organized groups have not been treated, but individuals who plan for themselves and execute the attacks. Therefore, they argue, address the rise of political violence in the United States will be difficult but not impossible, since it is easier to deal with individuals than with organized groups that exercise better planned political violence, as part of a more structured plot and with well -defined objectives.
The solution is – these experts appear to conclude – in strengthening the regulation of the sale of weapons and that the political class calls moderation and is the example of civism and pluralism before society. It seems to me that they are flatly mistaken both in their diagnosis and in their proposals.
In the first place, it should be said that political violence has been more a rule than an exception in American history. Just to cite some notorious examples, figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan were white from homicidal attacks, most of the successful times. Therefore, it is true that political violence is reaching unusual and alarming levels in the United States, but it is wrong to think that the problem is simply conjunctural, since violence is deeply rooted in the political culture of that country.
Second, it is true that the issue of easy access to high -power weapons for any citizen is a serious problem and that restricting it would be essential to reduce political violence. However, the problem of firearms is not public policy, but from politics to dry (one more sample of the useless differentiation between Politics and Policy in the Anglo -Saxon world).
For the Republican Party Regular the sale of weapons is a forbidden issue, both for the funds they receive from weapons and ideological reasons: genuinely, glorify the ability to have firearms for personal and family defense as a sign of freedom, autonomy and individualism.
Finally, to think that the current political class of the United States is able to call self -convenience and give an example of civism and tolerance is naive. Trump’s veiled exhort and other Republican leaders to respond violently to Kirk’s murder.
The main error of these analysts is that they minimize the degree of social fracture and political dysfunctionality of the United States. A recent movie, Eddington of the director Ari Aster, it is a precise and sharp portrait of this broken society.
I will not ruin the movie for those who have not seen it. I will only say that Eddington It takes place in a small town in New Mexico, in the middle of the Covid-19 Pandemia. But the disease is not the central theme of the film, but the scenario in which the plot is unfolded, a surreal history that, through absurd exaggeration and irony, points out tensions and contradictions, apparently irreconcilable, between different sectors of US society.
