Against the background of brutalization of the world, American political life is also experiencing an acceleration of violence. Disguised as a police officer with a mask at the Fantômas, an anti-abortion fanatic fell an elected representative of Minnesota and her husband at their home, on June 14, before going to a senator from the same state to screen him with bullets as well as his wife (seriously injured, the couple is in the hospital). The same weekend, California senator Alex Padilla was violently expelled, in Los Angeles, of a press conference by the Minister of Internal Security Kristi Noem. He wanted to question him about the expulsions of migrants in progress.
Result ? The elected democrat was placed on the ground by three police officers and handcuffed, as if the police attacked democracy. To this disturbing list should be added the double murder last month of two employees of the Embassy of Israel in Washington, the criminal fire against the villa of the Governor of Pennsylvania in the middle of the night two months ago and the two attacks against the life of Donald Trump, in campaign last summer.
Of a wide variety (political murders, anti -Semitic crime, police brutality …), this sequence is the symptom of a toxic climate where verbal violence results in acting. The vitiated atmosphere recalls that of the end of the 19th century, when two presidents were murdered in an atmosphere of extreme polarization, but also that, disturbed, of the 1960s. Apogeée of war in Vietnam and the fight for civil rights, the year 1968 was that of anti -war demonstrations, blind police repressions and assassinations of personalities: Martin Luther King and “Bobby” Kennedy.
But did not exist neither social networks – these resentment multipliers – nor Donald Trump. At the time, the presidents did not throw oil on the fire. They tried to appease the debates while ensuring to guarantee the freedom of expression provided for by the first amendment of the Constitution without intimidating anyone. And if Eisenhower one day mobilized the national guard against the governor’s advice – as Trump does in Los Angeles – it was for a good cause. In 1957, “IKE” sent soldiers to Little Rock (Arkansas) to guarantee the right of access to the school of nine black teenagers victims of racism. It was a question of extinguishing a conflict, not of stirring it …