Some years ago, trying to understand what it might take to break America’s fever of political violence, I asked a former Justice Department official what she thought about the possibility of a second civil war in the United States.Mary McCord, a former federal prosecutor who has spent much of her career thinking about how to combat extremism, was worried about worsening political violence. (I favor a simple definition of political violence: actions intended to provoke or prevent change.) And like many of the people I have interviewed about political violence over the years—including top military officials, members of Congress, local and federal law enforcement, political scientists, terrorism experts, peace negotiators, and others—she told me that cycles of horrific political violence can perpetuate themselves for a generation or more after they have taken hold. Once a certain threshold is crossed, political violence tends to get worse before it gets better, in… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.
3 days ago
