All Rioted Out

News from DC

I made one prediction, and only one, about this election: despite the obvious reasons to fear mass unrest, I don’t think we’re about to enter a season of rioting. And, apprehensive though I was about traveling to DC yesterday and today, it looks like I may have been right.

In the immediate term, at least, the Capitol is not being burned or besieged. Neither are the major cities that boarded up their storefronts in advance of Tuesday night. There may be several reasons for this, but perhaps one of them is common to all Americans, of all stripes and flavors: we’re tired of tearing things down. America, thank God, may be all rioted out.

No account of the country’s recent turmoil is complete unless it includes both the race riots of 2020 and the disgraceful spectacle of January 6. I’m not trying to equate those two things morally, and I find it pointless to engage in arguments over “which was worse.” But unless you interpret them both as signals of extreme civic unhealth, I submit, you haven’t met the minimum conditions for adult discussion of our situation.

Which is why an even more important question than whom we elect president is whether we’re going to keep this nonsense up. It looks like maybe the answer is no, though not because the rhetorical temperature has simmered down—in the weeks leading up to the election, it arguably reached a fever pitch. But the sound and fury of manufactured Armageddon seems to be losing its potency to motivate actual street violence. The press frothed and shouted and worked up such a lather that they drove people within inches of an assassination and even perhaps of civil war. And then, miraculously, it seems like the shock of getting so close pulled us up short.

The New York Times reported, with some bewilderment, that social media is not flooded with rallying cries as it was in 2016. Rachel Maddow, of all people, invited her viewers to extend the olive branch to their Trumpist uncles at Thanksgiving. It could be at this point that the people who spent years in the streets shouting “I’m tired” are now actually too tired to shout in the streets.

That would be an excellent thing, not because we should simply shut up about our differences of opinion, but because we already tried chanting and melting down on TikTok and doing vandalism. That is, we tried doing what the pundit class wanted us to do and it got us nowhere. In fact it quite literally got us right back where we started which, given how much noise we made, is objectively pretty hilarious—even if you don’t like where we started and you hate being back here.

I guess James Madison knew what he was about in Federalist 10, when he suggested making the country so big that even major conflagrations would exhaust themselves before they burned their way to the heart of the republic. “Extend the sphere,” wrote Madison, “and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests.” Not even the largest of them will be able, in the long run, to force the others into their preferred course of action. Which means eventually, after the tantrums are over, our only remaining option is to play together nicely.