Give Me Liberty or Give You Death

There is a really disturbing thread running through our social discourse these days: death threats. Woe betide any of us who happen to pick the wrong side of a hot-button issue and express ourselves. It doesn’t stop with being trolled. We may be warned that it could be fatal.

Many on the left may believe that legislators on the right are crazy or stupid. But some of those legislators may also fear that if they don’t vote the way their base thinks they should, it won’t just be a question of getting primaried in the next election. A wrong-way vote can also be considered betrayal, and those legislators, and their families, can be threatened with death.

Our most prominent infectious disease specialist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, reported in a recent interview that he and members of his family have received multiple threats of harm, and on one occasion, Dr. Fauci said, he opened a letter and was dusted with a fine powder, which turned out, after analysis, to be benign, but still!

You don’t even have to be famous. I heard an NPR story about a young mother who consulted others on social media about whether to get routine vaccinations for her children. After struggling with the decision, she finally came down in favor of vaccination. Then the death threats came from some of the anti-vaxers. Death threats, be they from the right or the left, are crimes - federal ones if done over interstate communications platforms.

To be clear, most threateners are cowards. They may be thousands of miles away and wouldn’t consider putting in the effort to travel to the victim’s home and actually carry out what they’re threatening. Their only weapon is their tongue or their keyboard. They go back to their lives while the recipients of the threats are likely losing sleep and maybe wondering whether to go into hiding.

The atmosphere is so poisoned now that some folks openly call for the beheading of their political opponents. Pardon me, but isn’t that ISIS talk?

My hope is that the Justice Department in the new administration takes this stuff seriously. It should be a priority to track down and prosecute, where possible, those who issue death threats. Blood may be running high these days, but there is behavior out there that we should never have to accept as normal.

Don't Be Afraid, Be Ready

Apocalyptic analyses and sweeping historical comparisons dominate the news now. The desecration of the US Capitol is compared with the British burning of the White House in the War of 1812 and the first shot at Fort Sumter, and if you want to go international, the fire at the German Reichstag in the Nazi era. To me, the assault on the Capitol smacked more of the angry mobs of the French and Russian revolutions. Until recently, I used to encounter the word  “sedition” only in history books. Now we’re hearing it a dozen times a day.

There are demands to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the President for inciting the mob or even impeach him. Other heads are already rolling, to use a reference from the aforementioned French Revolution, following an egregious security failure which may even have been deliberate in some respects.

The thing that offends me most about this debacle is that we don’t have the time for any of this right now. There is a pandemic out there killing people and destroying the economy. The angry mob that invaded the Capitol - and some of the legislators doing business inside it - wasted precious time. Those legislators who tried to impede the certification of the November election will pay a political price. The violent invaders who can be identified must be forced to pay theirs. I bet some of them were carrying COVID too. The Capitol building needs disinfecting, physically, politically, and maybe even spiritually.

Our most dramatic scenarios now include a possible second Civil War. While I don’t think our President-elect needs to address that out loud, I do think he has to be prepared for it. Most important, he has to communicate through his demeanor and tone that he is not afraid of it and that he will respond if necessary, swiftly and effectively.

If there are folks out there who really are thinking about mounting a new Civil War, I would suggest that they be careful what they wish for. They would do well to open their own history books and consider how the last one came out.