The price of excusing political violence by Howard Morton

 

There are moments in a democracy when the danger is not hidden behind masks or whispered in back rooms. It stands in broad daylight, smiling for cameras, wrapped in slogans about patriotism and freedom. The celebration surrounding Donald Trump’s proposed $1.8 billion compensation fund for Jan. 6 defendants and supporters is one of those moments.

What was once described by conservatives as “regrettable” behavior is now being polished into martyrdom. The people who stormed the Capitol, assaulted police officers, smashed windows, hunted lawmakers through hallways and attempted to overturn a lawful election are increasingly portrayed not as offenders against constitutional order, but as victims deserving restitution. The transformation is astonishing and deeply dangerous.

This is not merely about sympathy for protesters. Democracies can survive protests, even ugly ones. What they cannot survive is the normalization of political violence as an acceptable instrument of power.

Trump understands this instinctively. He rarely endorses extremism directly. Instead, he operates through implication, suggestion and strategic ambiguity. He praises the “love” in the crowd. He speaks of unfair persecution. He hints that those prosecuted for Jan. 6 were treated worse than criminals. The message lands exactly where it is intended to land: if your cause is politically useful to him, your actions can be morally excused.

That is how institutions erode, not always through dramatic collapse, but through the slow rewriting of public morality.

The proposed compensation fund sends a chilling message to the country: attacking the constitutional transfer of power may not only become politically acceptable, it may become financially rewarded. Imagine the precedent. A future mob, convinced an election was stolen, could look back at Jan. 6 not as a warning but as validation. The line separating protest from insurrection becomes negotiable, dependent entirely on partisan loyalty.

And what of the police officers who defended the Capitol that day? Conservatives once wrapped themselves in “Back the Blue” rhetoric with near-religious devotion. Yet many of the same voices now minimize the beatings, chemical attacks and injuries suffered by law enforcement officers during the riot. Political convenience has replaced principle. Officers are heroes only when they fit the narrative.

The larger issue is not Trump alone. Democracies decline when political tribes begin treating legality as conditional. The Constitution becomes sacred only when it produces desired outcomes. Courts are legitimate only when they rule correctly. Elections are fair only when one’s side wins. Once that mindset takes hold, democratic culture begins to rot from within.

America has endured bitter elections before. It survived Watergate, civil unrest, assassinations and wars because most citizens still accepted one foundational rule: power changes hands through ballots, not intimidation. Jan. 6 shattered that assumption. Reframing the participants as deserving compensation shatters it further.

History rarely announces democratic backsliding with marching bands. More often, it arrives disguised as grievance politics and selective outrage. Citizens are encouraged to believe that loyalty to a leader matters more than loyalty to institutions. Violence becomes understandable. Then forgivable. Then patriotic.

That progression should alarm every American, regardless of party. Because once a nation begins rewarding attacks on its own democratic system, it is no longer defending constitutional order. It is negotiating with its destruction.