A personal note on how we got here and how we might start to step back from the brink.

<<<SHOULD LEADERS IN BOTH PARTIES PUBLICLY COMMIT NOT TO USE LAW ENFORCEMENT AGAINST POLITICAL OPPONENTS?>>> ([link removed] )

John,

I turn 30 next year. Depending on who you ask, that puts me at the tail end of the Millennials or the front edge of Gen Z. I joke that the dividing line is whether you can recognize the sound of a dial-up modem – and, more importantly, whether you remember 9/11 and the immediate aftermath.

I do.

I was in my first week of kindergarten in the D.C. area, and my dad was working on Capitol Hill that morning. I have vague but enduring memories of being picked up from school by my mom, smelling the smoke from the Pentagon, and the feeling in our house that something had changed forever. But I also remember how our nation’s leaders sought to bring the country together in the wake of that tragedy.

That is why hearing President Trump’s remarks at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service this past weekend hit so hard. Whatever your thoughts on Kirk’s beliefs, the service was an opportunity to turn down the temperature and demonstrate grace in the face of a senseless act of political violence – the kind many in our nation extended in the weeks after 9/11, from everyday acts of kindness to lawmakers from both parties singing “God Bless America” on the Capitol steps.

Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika, demonstrated that grace, going so far as to forgive the man accused of killing her husband. For a moment, it seemed President Trump would match her tone: “Charlie did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them.” Unfortunately, he then said: “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponents. And I don’t want the best for them.”

Sadly, whether they admit it or not, too many of our elected leaders share that same view. And once you start thinking that way, it doesn’t stay on social media or at rallies – it seeps into how power gets used. If you see opponents as enemies, it is all too tempting to reach for prosecutors and courts to punish them. That’s how we slide from politics to lawfare.

Make no mistake – President Trump’s conduct, past and present, has often been indefensible and has helped degrade our politics, so it is understandable many would oppose him. But we also have to tell the fuller truth: both parties have reached for law as a weapon against opponents. Many Democrats called President Trump an illegitimate president on the back of “Russian agent” accusations that outran the evidence in the Mueller report. Others pursued multiple dubious civil and criminal cases against him and members of his family, pushed to deplatform him on social media, and filed lawsuits to kick him off ballots. In turn, Republicans have put pressure on DOJ and state officials to investigate Democratic opponents and led a House impeachment inquiry into President Biden, paired with sweeping subpoenas of his family, and this past weekend President Trump made public demands that his Attorney General target named political adversaries.

Taken together, they paint a dark picture of a politics more focused on prosecuting than persuading.

No Labels saw how underhanded and unethical politics today can get during our effort to field a Unity presidential ticket in 2024, when some in the Democratic Party decided the answer was to try and block us from ballot access and label us a threat to democracy. We filed a civil rights complaint because denying Americans a choice is not how a confident democracy behaves.

And this is how the language of emergency becomes normal. The more politics becomes an all-out-battle, the more people talk themselves into a permanent “wartime” posture. Lawfare teaches both sides to expect future payback, and makes every election feel all the more existential.

It is no wonder it has become easy to find loud voices online claiming the country is in a state of “war.” Maybe those armchair warriors believe it, but most Americans do not and are tired of a politics that treats every dispute as a life-or-death struggle.

SHOULD LEADERS IN BOTH PARTIES PUBLICLY COMMIT NOT TO USE LAW ENFORCEMENT AGAINST POLITICAL OPPONENTS?
([link removed] )

I was five when the country felt briefly united after 9/11; now I am almost 30 and America feels a million miles from that moment. The only way we can start clawing our way back is by practicing forbearance when it is hardest, starting with the people we disagree with the most. Neither party has the right to censor their political opponents or to weaponize the Justice Department against them. Down that road lies the end of our democracy.

If you are tired of the cycle and ready to get out of it, stick with us and stand with the leaders trying to build something better.

Sam Zickar

No Labels

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