America must, unfortunately, come to terms with its own increasing theat of mass extremism.
Violent extremism, as a problem for U.S. policy, needs to be viewed in much different terms than it has hitherto. Terrorism, the component of violent extremism that traditionally has most alarmed Americans, also needs a major rethink. The need for rethinking is greater than after past incidents that, traumatic as they were, shaped what has been the dominant American way of thinking about violent extremism.
A major facet of that thinking over the past two decades has been that a terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 was a watershed moment that marked a great change in threats to U.S. national security. But what suddenly changed twenty years ago was popular attitudes because of the spectacular nature and casualty toll of that one attack not the threat itself. The nature of the threat had already been recognized by those responsible for countering it. The U.S. government was actively combating
U.S. President Joe Biden delivers his inaugural address on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2021, in Washington, D.C. | Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images
Nearly two-thirds of white evangelical Protestants do not believe that President Joe Biden was legitimately elected, according to data from the public policy research organization American Enterprise Institute.
Recently, AEI’s Survey Center on American Life released findings from its January 2021 American Perspectives Survey. The research is based on interviews with 2,016 adults from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The survey focused on the post-election political views of Americans and was announced earlier this month.
In the end, America’s controversial ex-president survived his second trial in the Senate. While 57 out of 100 senators in that body voted to convict him, that was still fewer than the required two-thirds of senators present and voting.
Ultimately, seven Republican senators broke ranks with their party and voted with the 50 Democrats, producing the most bipartisan of any impeachment trial in the past. Historically, there have been four trials of presidents: Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, twice.
Led by Representative Jamie Raskin, the House of Representatives’ trial managers gave a compelling recapitulation of the 6 January mob attack on the Capitol and traced it back through the full four years of the 45th president’s time in office. In essence, their argument was the then-president had groomed his followers for years into believing he was the inevitable choice of American voters, and that if he lost, it could only be through vote-rigging, other cheating, and s