This month, near my hometown in Maine, I found myself driving behind a pickup truck festooned with stickers — some patriotic, some military, some funny. But a sticker with 13 stars encircling a Roman numeral III snagged my attention.
Most adhesive-based sloganeering is about as subtle as a brick through a window, but sometimes it winks and nods. This particular symbol belongs to a group called the Three Percenters, a loosely organized movement named for the supposed 3 percent of the population of the 13 colonies that fought British rule. It’s also been called a radical gun-rights group and an extremist paramilitary organization. Many veterans of the military and law enforcement are affiliated with it. Numerous self-declared members were convicted of serious crimes for taking part in the Jan. 6 attack.
Maybe that sticker caught my eye because at that moment, I was also listening to radio news reports on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Or maybe it was because I have spent years following reporting on political violence in the United States and thinking about how to thwart it. Once one is literate in far- right symbolism — say, an Appeal to Heaven or Gadsden flag — it’s hard not to notice it everywhere. Our society is shot through with ideas and movements that are openly hostile to peaceful self-government.
That’s why, as alarming as it was, the attempt on Mr. Trump’s life was unsurprising to many people who have watched with growing horror the rising tide of political violence over the past few years: the assault on the husband of the speaker of the House, the threats to kill a Supreme Court justice and the former vice president, the plot to kidnap a governor, mass shootings in mosques and synagogues and grocery stores, the attacks on Jan. 6. One of the most hyped movies this year has been “Civil War,” which imagines the country plunged into armed conflict after a president refuses to leave office. This is the spirit of our times.
The societal trends that have fertilized the ground for political violence are well known: a near-religious worship of the AR-15 semiautomatic military-style rifle and a cult of apocalyptic militarism that surrounds its marketing, the toleration of armed paramilitary groups, the spread of extreme anti-government sentiments among those in uniform, the morass of conspiracies disseminated for financial and political gain, the open embrace of explicitly anti-democratic ideas by the Republican Party.
That brief moment with the truck might have passed into the rearview mirror of my life except that the driver failed to come to a complete halt at a stop sign and was pulled over by a police officer.
As the officer walked up to the truck, I wondered if that sticker would tip the scales toward a ticket, or toward a warning for an obvious, though harmless, moving violation.
In our age of political violence, minor interactions with the police can take on an outsize importance. Consider the gunman who shot at the former president and took the life of a bystander, Corey Comperatore, in Butler, Pa. The would-be assassin was reported to have had several encounters with police officers in the minutes leading up to the shooting. In fact, many acts of political violence are often preceded by interactions with law enforcement. There are almost always warning signs. Even lone wolves don’t act in isolation.
So was this driver a hard-core Three Percenter, someone who believes that a vanguard of armed people can overthrow a tyrannical government? Or was he just a Mainer who slapped the sticker on his truck to fit in with his buddies? As a website selling the group’s patch helpfully notes, “Despite what the media would have you believe, wearing this patch does not make you part of an organized far-right anti-government militia.” Maybe he was using it as a kind of get-out-of-jail free card for minor traffic stops, the same instinct that prompts many people to display Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association stickers.
Too often, ours seems like an age of impunity. Donald Trump, although now a felon, has coasted through countless court proceedings on a magic carpet of money, sympathetic judges and a cult of personality. If he is elected president, he will most likely end the federal prosecutions against him — as if crimes against the United States can be excused by popular acclaim.
Meanwhile, some Republican leaders have found creative ways to support Trump officials and allies who broke the law. They voted to make support for the appeal of Steve Bannon, who faces prison for defying congressional subpoenas, the official position of the House of Representatives. The pardoned moneyman Paul Manafort walked the floor at the Republican National Convention this month, while a former Trump trade adviser, Peter Navarro, spoke there six months after his conviction for criminal contempt of Congress. Mr. Trump, for his part, has vowed to “absolutely” consider pardoning Americans convicted of crimes during the Jan. 6 attack if elected.
Yet accountability is the only vaccine for endemic political violence. That means accountability for extremism in word and deed. Accountability for lies and for their impact. Accountability for violations of the law. Accountability for professional failures that lead to tragedy.
We saw what accountability should look like this week when members of both parties, who typically cannot agree on the time of day, called for the resignation of Kimberly Cheatle, the head of the Secret Service. President Biden was right to note that “it takes honor, courage and incredible integrity to take full responsibility for an organization tasked with one of the most challenging jobs in public service.” I hope that more resignations or firings follow, should the investigation find grounds for them.
Political violence isn’t a disease that can be cured. It is a chronic condition that must be managed with vigilance, purpose and unity of effort. As experts told me again and again, if institutions and individuals do more to make it unacceptable in American public life, organized violence in the service of political objectives can still be pushed to the fringes where it belongs. That starts with accountability, but it doesn’t end there.
Did the driver with the Three Percenter sticker get off with a warning for failure to stop? I hope so; I’d hope that anyone would. But I also hope the police officer did his due diligence and ran the plate and registration. Around election time, in a society where political violence is ever-present, you never know. But vigilance isn’t free: The doubt and mistrust with which we are compelled to view our fellow Americans might be the most corrosive force of all. Let’s hope it’s not forever.
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