BUTLER, PENNSYLVANIA – JULY 13: Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is rushed offstage during a rally on July 13, 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
On the morning that Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were assassinated, I was speaking to a civic group on the dangers of political polarization.
I opened by reflecting on our increasingly violent political climate as indicated by these shootings and last year’s attempted assassination of Donald Trump.
At a lunch table afterward, someone challenged me. “That Trump thing,” she said, “was staged. It was set up to make him look brave.”
Startled, I asked about the blood. “Faked by the Secret Service when they tackled him.”
The man killed? “A mistake.”
This was from a woman who 30 minutes before had argued that religious fanatics are causing today’s polarization.
Later that day, voices on the other side of the political spectrum insinuated that Gov. Tim Walz was somehow responsible for Hortman’s death because he had appointed the alleged killer to a volunteer advisory board. Or crazy Marxists were behind it.
I was feeling whiplash.
Two tragedies. Two shocking theories. One disturbing pattern: If a terrible event can help the other side, they must have orchestrated it.
This partisan reflex is connected to what social scientists refer to as zero-sum bias — the tendency to assume that a gain for an out-group creates a loss for the in-group. It also stems from motivated reasoning about politics: We don’t just take in public facts neutrally — we filter them through our political identities. If an event seems to bolster our opponents, we instinctively look for a way to discredit it or blame them for it. Think 9/11 (Bush set it up to justify war) or the Sandy Hook kindergarten massacre (a hoax by gun control fanatics).
Of course, tragic events often do have political consequences. A shooting can lead to pressure for gun control. An assassination attempt can rally support.
Consequences, however, are not the same as causes. Correlation does not prove conspiracy.
But in our era of conflict entrepreneurs, viral social media, and deep mistrust of institutions, the leap from “this helps them” to “they set it up” is becoming more common — and more reflexive. There are no disturbed lone wolves or random events anymore. It’s the other side’s plan. Internet clicks and partisan admiration flow to those who proclaim these hidden “truths.”
We have to name and resist this. As individuals and communities, we can hold two truths at once: That tragedy can have political consequences, and that those consequences do not always mean orchestration.
When we succumb to this way of thinking, we unravel the very idea of a shared public life.