Pixelated Pitchforks
One of the Founders’ deepest fears was the public mob mentality. That’s why the direct democracy of Athens became the opposite of what it was supposed to be. “Mob-rule is a rough sea for the ship of state to ride,” an American historian once wrote. “Every wind of oratory stirs up the waters and deflects the course. The upshot of such a democracy is tyranny or autocracy; the crowd so loves flattery, it is so ‘hungry for honey,’ that at last the wiliest and most unscrupulous flatterer, calling himself the ‘protector of the people,’ rises to supreme power.” That’s when self-government implodes. The Founders set out to remedy this. They created representative government instead of direct democracy, staggered elections every few years to avoid the momentary impulses of the masses, and counted on the country’s large size to make it hard for the demands of angry factions to spread from state to state.
The modern age is threatening our system in ways they could never have imagined. Representative government no longer insulates elected leaders from the sudden convulsions of the people. Today, members of Congress are harassed around the clock online. With every word and vote scrutinized, they are shying away from cooperation and adopting the tone of those who pressure them. Social media has allowed factions to form suddenly, cross boundaries virtually, and snowball, despite the large size of our nation. There is no longer any need for compromise when you can silence the opposition with virtual intimidation.
Our current president exploits the mob mentality, which is the most consequential aspect of his charged rhetoric.
Trump revels in the herd-like behavior of his followers. He uses his social media presence to inflame public debates and to dispatch supporters to attack politicians who’ve criticized him—or to rally followers in his defense. We all know that people are dumber and crueler in large groups. Trump plays this to his advantage by directing the violent energy toward whatever careless end he wishes. When the pixelated pitchforks get raised, truth becomes the first victim. Irrationality takes over. That’s how the president turns his own fake news into instantaneous reality. His falsehoods get retweeted by the tens of thousands before the fact-checkers wake up. Today, there is no limit to how many pitchforks he can put into the hands of the virtual mob because social media allows it to swell to unlimited sizes, spreading his words far and wide, for free.
People around Trump are also blameworthy. Some among us have too readily accepted the president’s offers to start Twitter wars to denigrate critics opposed to the administration’s policies, while others actively seek him out and ask Trump to send raw voltage into the news feeds of his followers in order to light up a new cause. The president knows he can make people angry about anything. Everyone on his team has seen it happen, and people try to take advantage of it.
The real threat is when the madness bleeds over from the digital world into the real one, as it does at Trump events. You should see the West Wing before a rally. It’s buzzing like a pre-game locker room. Trump doesn’t travel to these arena-sized events to talk policy. He goes to rile up the crowd with pull-no-punches attacks on his enemies. With a Marine One helicopter waiting on the South Lawn, aides might be trying to tell him about a stock market development, but he’s not hearing it. He’s in the zone and thinking about bombastic things to say from the podium tonight. Trump might pause the meeting to road test an incendiary one-liner by calling a confidant to see if it really stings.
Watch any Trump rally. Whether through chants of “Lock her up!” or “Send her back!” our president arms audiences with weaponized language. At an event in Florida, Trump asked the crowd how to deal with illegal immigrants. “How do you stop these people?” he asked, his frustration visibly mounting while talking about the challenges at the border. “Shoot them!” one rally-goer cried. Rather than temper the suggestion, the president smiled and chuckled. “That’s only in the Panhandle you can get away with that statement.”
Defenders have scoffed at the idea that the president incites clannish hatred. At the aforementioned rally, they say, he prefaced his question by actually clarifying that the United States couldn’t use weapons to fend off immigrant caravans. “We can’t. I would never do that,” Trump conceded, but those are the types of tongue-in-cheek statements he makes when he actually does want to do something.
In fact, it was Trump himself the previous year who suggested shooting immigrants found crossing the border. Yes, shooting them, real human beings, with bullets from guns held by members of our armed forces. “They are throwing rocks viciously and violently,” he said, discussing an incoming caravan of people, most of whom were fleeing poverty. They’d been on the march for weeks and had gotten past Mexican authorities. “We are not going to put up with that. If they want to throw rocks at our military, our military fights back. I told them to consider it a rifle. When they throw rocks like they did at the Mexico military and police, I say consider it a rifle.”
Some people listening thought this was just another Trump riff that carried him away for a moment, but it wasn’t rhetoric. It wasn’t facetious. He wanted it to happen. He’d deployed US troops to the border because he was trying to show a “tougher” response. Trump didn’t want to murder innocent people, but he thought injuring a few immigrants would serve as a warning to others. “Why not?” he asked advisors. Defense Department officials, in full panic, picked up the phone to forcefully remind the White House about the actual rules of engagement for our troops, which did not include opening fire on unarmed civilians.
At a minimum, Trump’s language is alienating in a way that feeds hateful groupthink. It’s hard for my fellow Republicans to acknowledge this because the media is so sensationalistic. Television talking heads always assume the president’s actions are bigoted, hyperventilating about everything he does. Trust me, I feel tempted to write them off, too, but there is no avoiding the fact that his words have a striking undertone of racial animus. Is this so hard to believe?
Fellow Republicans called candidate Trump a “race-baiting xenophobic bigot” in the presidential campaign. Do those now-silent Republicans believe the magic of the Oval Office has somehow transformed the man into a champion for racial tolerance? Nothing has changed. Whatever you think of Donald Trump, his views are alienating and deeply ingrained. When the president talks about people he wants to keep out of America, he tends to bring up Latin America, Africa, or Middle Eastern nations. When he tells the public about places he loves—countries whose citizens he would happily welcome in large numbers—he tends to talk about European nations, especially white, wealthy Nordic countries. I still don’t think he’s a hardline racist, but draw your own conclusions.
Extremists are hijacking the president’s rhetoric to promote their movements. The killer responsible for the deadly mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart, for example, wrote that he was “defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an [Hispanic] invasion”—an “invasion” that Trump speaks about almost daily. Is the president culpable in such heinous acts? Absolutely not, but he is responsible for setting the tone on divisive issues, for failing to choose his words carefully, and for fostering a climate of intimidation that can cultivate violence.