Be Careful Out There

Why I fear post-election violence

It takes a certain personality type to predict negativity.  I am not of that type.  From where I’m sitting, there’s no upside.  If I’m right, people are going to get hurt.  If I’m wrong, I must be paranoid. 

For the past few years, I’ve been concerned about the potential of our simmering civil war to become bloody.  I’ve written passionately and in depth about the ways we could still pull ourselves back from the brink.  I no longer think that’s possible.  Regardless of public sentiment, tomorrow’s official outcome, or the relationship between them, I believe that the United States is hurtling into an abyss.  Nothing would thrill me more than making it through 2025 without a new surge of street violence, a new authoritarian crackdown, or both.  I’m doubtful, however, that we will be that lucky.

I reach that conclusion because of several trends I’ve been tracking for over a decade.  These trends all relate to the transformation of America’s left from its 1990s position combining strong civil liberties with mild democratic socialism to its current posture rooted in radical, authoritarian, utopian socialism.

First, our country is bifurcated along class lines as never before.  Our elite—credentialed professionals, many but far from all affluent—occupy an entirely different mindspace from the rest of the country.  Their views on culture, economics, sex, God, and patriotism bear no relationship to anything that existed more than a few decades ago, or to anything that exists today outside of their rarified world.  As a result, America’s elite and its masses view each other warily, as dangerous “others” who can’t be trusted.

Second, the entire leadership of the left—America’s opinion elite—has gone all in on the idea that Trump poses a “unique threat.”  They’re not entirely wrong.  While Trump poses no threat to either American republicanism or democratic governance, he does pose a unique threat to them.  He and his followers seek to undermine an entire socioeconomic structure that keeps the elite in power.  The dangerous “evolution” they have undergone over the past few decades has indeed turned them into an “other” that the masses are right to view warily.  Remember: The opposite of populism is elitism, not “our democracy” (whatever that means).

So we’ve got two groups that see themselves as occupying different cultural, economic, and moral universes.  The group wielding all the power feels—correctly—that their hold on power is threatened.  Start the red lights flashing.

Third, the threatened elite has been unified and clear about its commitment to do whatever it takes to ensure that Trump cannot dismantle the structures preserving their power.  In March 2020 they dispensed with any pretense that the U.S. is still a constitutional republic; there’s simply no way to square the Bill of Rights with the Covid lockdowns.  They’ve since weaponized large parts of Federal and State governments against their political opponents, fabricating charges on which to indict Trump, jailing key supporters on flimsy process crimes, and brutalizing J6 trespassers.  And those are only the high profile efforts.  They clearly see Trump supporters as an undifferentiated mass of deplorable, bigoted, garbage Nazis who cannot be allowed to secure power in the name of their leader.

Fourth, as part of their efforts, they’ve garbled our electoral processes so badly that no one in their right mind believes that they measure public sentiment.  Of course, they do measure something, and because both a free-and-fair election and whatever the hell we currently have are designed to make a binary choice, plenty of people (i.e., the majority of those pleased with the official outcome) will pretend that the output of our electoral processes represents the will of the public.  But it won’t and it can’t.  The official results will be close enough, and the processes will be corrupt enough, to ensure that no one will ever believe that a majority of the country rejected their preferred choice.  And they will be right to do so: There cannot be enough credible data to sustain anything other than rank speculation about true public sentiment.

So we’ve now got either Trump supporters convinced that the system was so heavily rigged against them that the outcome was foreordained or Kamala backers convinced that America is hurtling into fascism.  Either belief is grounds for concluding that government authority has become illegitimate.

Fifth, the United States has a thriving grievance-based mob industry.  There is an entire stratum of American nonprofits and worldwide NGOs working to generate violence.  It’s extremely lucrative.  A small cadre of professionals identify themselves with a cause.  They then rake in the money, and when activated retain a rent-a-mob.  They pay people by the hour, with no benefits, and no liability if their minions hurt people, destroy property, or get hurt .  In 2010-12, I did some work with the SF Jewish Community Relations Council.  One of their big projects involved fighting “Israel Apartheid Week” on local campuses.  In 2011, the antisemitic fest fizzled.  The JCRC took a bow.  I kept trying to convince them that it had fizzled only because all of the professional protestors were in Madison, WI, where Gov. Scott Walker was fighting with the teachers unions.  To these people, public sector unions are bread-and-butter.  Antisemitism is just feelgood work.  Sure enough, the JCRC repeated its 2011 steps in 2012—and Israel Apartheid Week returned in full force. The professional rent-a-mob industry is real.

Sixth, the left has been deploying these professional agitators since 2013.  Neither protests nor street violence are new phenomena, but the current wave began with the Trayvon Martin and Ferguson protests.  President Obama embraced the organizers and brought them in to play a critical part in his transformation of the country.  Since then, Democrats have trotted them out every few years, ratcheting them up as needed.  The 2020 race riots were bad.  In 2023, antisemitism took center stage.  When the antisemites threatened to take over the DNC in Chicago, however, the Democrats turned off all the professionals.  What was left was a relatively manageable group of committed, grassroots Jew-haters.  The Democrats have wisely kept the professionals turned off through the election.

That bring us to tomorrow.  Following the election, elite leadership—far more concerned with preserving its own power than the welfare of the country—is still legally in power and woven into the decision-making fabric of every important institution and agency in America. They will see themselves as facing one of two imperatives.  They will either have to ensure that Trump cannot ascend despite winning the election—which will require violence against his supporters.  Or they will have to move preemptively to ensure that Trump supporters cannot protest an election rigged against them—which will require violence against those supporters.

Faced with either of those options, they will turn the professional mobs back on, wreaking havoc, hoping for some pushback, and eventually either provoking or staging a response.  From there, the deployment of massive government force will be “required” to keep the peace.  The idea that perhaps these elitists could hand over power peacefully, work with the significant Congressional representation they will achieve even if as a minority in both chambers, and focus on the states they dominate will never occur to them.

Ironically, the one person positioned to keep the peace is Joe Biden.  If the official results put Trump ahead, Biden could secure his legacy with a congratulatory message and a public announcement of his plans to ensure an orderly transition and peaceful transfer of power.  He won’t do it gracefully—he’s beyond the ability to do anything gracefully—but Trump should be wise enough to take whatever olive branch is offered.

So that’s where I am.  I see one path towards peace—and it requires grace and forbearance from both Biden and Trump.  More likely than not, however, I expect America’s cities to burn.

I’ll thus close by reiterating my title: be careful out there.

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For more information about Bruce D. Abramson & American Restorationism, visit: www.BruceDAbramson.com

To learn more about America’s Spiritual Crisis and the new religion of Wokeism, see: American Spirit or Great Awokening?  The Battle to Restore or Destroy Our Nation (Academica Press, 2024). 

To learn more about how America’s elites destroyed the republic, see:  The New Civil War: Exposing Elites, Fighting Utopian Leftism, and Restoring America (RealClear Publishing, 2021).

To learn more about the ideology driving today’s anti-American leftism, see: American Restoration: Winning America’s Second Civil War (Kindle, 2019).

To learn more about our work at the American Coalition for Education and Knowledge, visit us at The Coalition for America.

To learn more about how I turn the ideas I discuss here into concrete projects that serve the interests of my clients, donors, and society at large, please e-mail me at bdabramson@pm.me.