Donald J. Trump speaks to supporters gathered for a rally at the Alaska Airlines Center on Saturday, July 9, 2022. (Bill Roth/DNA)
On a sunny July 9 afternoon at the Alaska Airlines Center, the crowd was in a jubilant mood, wearing familiar red hats, waving flags and holding signs. The assembled masses had come to see former President Donald Trump, backed by a supporting cast of local and national figures and cartoon characters: former Governor Sarah Palin, Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. The atmosphere fell somewhere between a church revival meeting and a Harlem Globetrotters game, or, less charitably, a professional wrestling match, a venue Trump has performed before, was done yet. more appropriate for the sports setting. Vendors from out of town were selling name-brand products on the sidewalk.
Trump and the others who took the stage before him played the hits, so to speak, spouting familiar lines, lashing out at liberals and the media, and throwing plenty of red meat rhetoric into the crowd. It had the air of a show, but the mood wasn’t nearly as angry or aggrieved as it was on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to stop President-elect Joe Biden’s certification of victory. . At the Alaska Airlines Center, the show was politics as entertainment, and members of the crowd had come to support their team.
In truth, politics and entertainment have always been closely intertwined in the American civic arena; it is inescapable and not inherently negative. To be successful at either, it helps to have a strong, magnetic personality and a flair for public speaking, so you can sell a vision to an audience.
But it was an entirely different scene that played out Tuesday at the Anchorage Assembly meeting, as members of the borough’s legislative branch considered a measure to codify the process for removing a mayor. A scene much more akin to the gruesome events of January 6. To be clear, drafting a policy that would allow the Assembly to remove a sitting mayor is provocative and wrong. But that was no excuse for the threatening behavior of some members of the public who came out to voice their opposition to the ordinance. Some of those who testified made implicit or explicit threats toward Assembly members, one woman challenged Assembly Speaker Suzanne LaFrance to a fight, and others required a greater police presence in the chambers to keep the peace. The mood recalled the ugly scenes of the last two years when members of the public yelled at Assembly members over COVID-19 restrictions, following them to their vehicles and even to their homes. As the political discourse says, it was beyond limits.
The irony in the stark contrast between the atmosphere at the two events is that there was almost certainly a substantial overlap between attendees at both. At the Trump rally, they were laughing and enjoying the political theater, but at the Assembly meeting, everyone had their elbows out.
And that is the danger of treating politics like a sport: when we see those on the other side of the political aisle not just as ideological rivals, but as a malevolent force to be opposed at all costs so that our “team” can win, it gives us the mental license to treat them as enemies and not as public servants with a different view of our city, state, or country. It also allows for the dangerous mindset that the end (the “right” side in power) somehow justifies the means, even if that means intimidating and threatening public officials or passing divisive laws to try to fool another branch of government. .
There are deep and substantive differences of opinion in our community about our best path forward. But no one likes the attitude that elected officials can somehow be convinced to act in a particular way through implicit or explicit threats of violence or political threats of impeachment. The endorsement of violence in the service of political ends would mean a full embrace of bullying and a complete retreat from the principles that are supposed to embody the American system of government.
