"But Will Things Explode?"

The question people keep asking me, as a reporter who covered the 2020 post-election mayhem, to which I answer...

During a pre-election Zoom last night, a young woman said she was “terrified” about what might happen in the streets, depending on who won the presidential election. I told her, from what I was seeing, I didn’t think things were going to explode.

Then she told me she lived and worked in downtown Portland.

Before I get to what I think might happen there and elsewhere, let’s take a look at what happened in Portland the day after the election in 2020:

This was the first time, after many many weeks of reporting, I saw the activists walking around with long guns.

Yes, that’s a banjo, but he and his pal also had rifles. (The “Ted” graffiti refers to Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler; the plywood on which it’s written that of Nordstrom, whose windows had been bashed out so many times during the summer they kept them covered into 2021.)

I’ll mention that the rifle-carriers, whom I wrote about for Reason (“Even With a Biden Win, Portland's Protesters Vow to Keep Smashing Stuff”) were polite:

"We've started carrying in Portland and overall, we've gotten a great reception," says banjo player, who hands his rifle to another friend so he can strum a few chords. "It's nothing to be ashamed of, also, not everyone should do it. As long as you're cool-headed and know what you're doing."

Movements require fuel, something Trump’s methods and personality had proved uniquely qualified to provide, if you were looking to become alarmed and then, with the assist of the pandemic keeping you both cooped up and afraid, to strike out, to luxuriate in violence, to see the murder of someone you had never met as cause for celebration.

We know all this, and also, that it can and will happen again; that the human soul contains a figurative seed that can sprout and make the destruction of their fellow man seem heroic.

Still, it’s not 2020 anymore. Those susceptible to joining movements have, by my count and in addition to January 6, had at least four other causes to keep their engines running, including Ukraine, Roe v. Wade, trans issues and Israel/Gaza.

This last is where the energy has been directed for more than a year, and even there, I’ve detected fatigue, especially at the DNC in Chicago, where an expected 30,000 turned out to be a tenth as many.

Which is good, right? Yes, and no. Here is one of the organizers - whose group had assured me the proceedings would be family-friendly - when the huzzah he’d anticipated turned out to be a razzberry.

People do not like to be made to look small; to have what they expected to be their hero’s welcome - or the welcome of the person or cause onto which they’ve hooked their identity - look like the losing side.

One way to avoid this would have been to not present your event as “family-friendly” when what you really wanted was to threaten people with violence. It’s also not a great idea to fall victim to or promote demagoguery but, too late for that.

I have seen how purposeful it can make people feel to tear shit down. I have further seen how, if a report does not match your idea of who is right and who is wrong, your amazing mind can flip the narrative, as one watcher of this video did, accusing me of having filmed this break in (to the federal courthouse in Portland) on a soundstage; he could tell from “the shine” on the helmets.

I asked the woman on the Zoom last night if, as scared as she was, she would not venture to downtown Portland, where, if anything pops off post-election, the action will surely occur. She answered that her job required her to be downtown. I asked her to stay in touch with me, to tell me what she was seeing. Several other reporter friends will be doing the same. I’ll livestream what I can.

But to answer the question in the headline: I do not think we are going to see the streets run with gouts of blood, and I do not think so because, as much as the Trump and Harris campaigns, as well as their staunch supporters, tell us we are and must be overwhelmingly committed, that it’s the “most important election of our lifetimes” (again), you cannot dun people into enthusiasm. You can ask me to fall in love with you but it’s not happening, and the ones I am in love with, don’t need to ask.

Will there be some violence after the election? Undoubtedly. But you need a running start to have what happened in Portland and other cities post-election 2020 happen, and I don’t see that kind of momentum this time.

See you on the other side.