The Politics of Destruction
By Darrell Lee
History rarely repeats itself with the precision of a photocopier, but it frequently rhymes with the cadence of a warning siren. As the United States navigates a tumultuous third decade of the 21st century, the air is thick with historical static. We hear the discordant notes of two specific eras: the American 1850s, a decade when political compromise collapsed into civil war, and the Weimar Republic of Germany (1919-1933), a fragile democracy that cannibalized itself and gave birth to a totalitarian nightmare. To understand the current crisis of polarization, we must look beyond the surface-level noise of daily tweets and cable news cycles. We must examine the specific mechanics of democratic erosion. By analyzing the breakdown of institutional forbearance in the 1850s and the delegitimization of the political center in Weimar Germany, we can see that today's polarization is not merely a matter of bad manners or heated rhetoric. It is a structural dismantling of the systems designed to manage conflict.
The decade preceding the American Civil War offers the most direct parallel to the dangers of binary polarization. In the 1850s, the United States did not simply slide into war; it systematically destroyed the institutions that had kept the peace for seventy years. The primary mechanism of this destruction was the evaporation of the middle ground. For decades, the Whig and Democratic parties had managed the explosive issue of slavery through a series of precarious compromises. But the Compromise of 1850, intended to settle the matter of slavery in newly acquired territories, failed to satisfy either side. Instead, it inflamed tensions, particularly through the Fugitive Slave Act, which forced Northern citizens to become complicit in the institution of slavery. This law did not just change policy; it obliterated the moral distance that Northerners had kept from the "peculiar institution."
The actual breaking point, however, arrived on May 30, 1854, with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This legislation repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30'. By allowing settlers in Kansas and Nebraska to decide the slavery question for themselves ("popular sovereignty"), Congress effectively outsourced a moral crisis to local vigilantes. The result was a proxy war where pro-slavery "Border Ruffians" and anti-slavery "Free Staters" murdered each other for political control. This was a crucial lesson for today: when institutions abdicate their responsibility to resolve fundamental conflicts, violence fills the vacuum.
The violence soon migrated from the plains of Kansas to the floor of the Senate. On May 22, 1856, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina entered the Senate chamber and savagely beat Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a gutta-percha cane, nearly killing him. Sumner had delivered a blistering speech attacking slavery and Brooks's relative, Senator Andrew Butler. The significance of this event lay not in the violence itself, but in the public reaction. In a healthy democracy, the assault would have drawn universal condemnation. Instead, it became a polarizing litmus test. The North viewed the attack as definitive proof of Southern barbarism and the silencing of free speech. The South, conversely, celebrated Brooks as a hero. Supporters sent him hundreds of replacement canes, some inscribed with the words, "Hit him again."
This phenomenon mirrors the modern atmosphere of "negative partisanship" and the celebration of transgressive behavior. In the 2020s, political actors who violate norms—whether by threatening officials, dehumanizing opponents, or questioning the integrity of elections—often see their fundraising surge and their standing rise within their base. The "Sumner mechanism" is at work today: the violation of the norm is not a bug; for the base, it is the feature. The 1850s saw the collapse of the national media environment into hermetically sealed bubbles. Northern abolitionist newspapers and Southern fire-eater pamphlets created two distinct realities. A citizen in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1859 read entirely different "facts" about John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry than a citizen in Boston. Today, algorithmic curation on social media has perfected this fragmentation. We no longer disagree on opinions; we inhabit different cognitive universes, making the empathy required for democratic compromise impossible.
If the American 1850s teaches us about binary conflict, the Weimar Republic teaches us how a democracy can vote itself out of existence. Born from the ashes of World War I on November 9, 1918, the Republic was plagued by a lack of legitimacy from its inception. Its constitution, adopted on August 11, 1919, was technically sharp but practically flawed, relying on a system of proportional representation that fractured parliament into tiny, squabbling parties. The foundational rot of Weimar was the "Stab in the Back" myth. This conspiracy theory claimed that the German army remained undefeated on the battlefield and was betrayed at home by Jews, socialists, and republican politicians. This lie did two things: it exonerated the military leadership, and it transformed political opponents into existential traitors. This mechanism—defining the opposition not as rivals but as illegitimate enemies of the state—is a flashing red light in modern politics. When contemporary leaders describe their opponents as "enemies of the people" or claim that an election was "stolen" by a shadow cabal, they are tapping into the same dark current that eroded Weimar. It creates a structure of permissions for political violence. If your opponent is a traitor destroying the nation, then respecting their rights is no longer a democratic duty, but a weakness.
The erosion of Weimar accelerated during the Great Depression. By 1930, the political center—the moderate Social Democrats and the Catholic Center Party—began to collapse. Voters fled to the extremes: the Communists (KPD) on the left and the National Socialists (Nazis) on the right. Both extremes openly despised the Republic. They brawled in the streets, turning politics into a physical contest of dominance. A critical turning point occurred when the establishment conservatives, led by Franz von Papen and President Paul von Hindenburg, decided they could use the Nazis to crush the Left. They believed they could "tame" Hitler. On January 30, 1933, Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor. The conservatives were wrong. They had invited a vampire into the house, believing they could control its appetite.
The Weimar lesson for today is the danger of "institutional hardball" and the misuse of emergency powers. The Weimar Constitution's Article 48 allowed the President to rule by decree in an emergency. In the final years of the Republic, chancellors relied increasingly on Article 48 to bypass a gridlocked Reichstag. This normalized the idea that democracy was too slow and that executive mandate was the only way to get things done. We see this in the modern American reliance on executive orders and the degradation of congressional power. When legislative bodies become paralyzed by polarization—as the US Congress often is today, and as the Reichstag was in 1932—the public begins to yearn for a strongman who can "fix it" alone. The frustration of a gridlocked democracy often paves the path to authoritarianism.
Comparing these two eras to the present day reveals a concerning set of parallels. We are currently experiencing the binary, geographical hatred of the 1850s combined with the institutional delegitimization of the Weimar era. Other traits in the current political environment are sounding a warning. Just as the Kansas-Nebraska Act nationalized the slavery fight, modern American politics has nationalized every local issue. School board meetings in Virginia or library disputes in rural Texas are no longer local debates; they are proxy battles in a national culture war. This leaves no refuge from polarization. It exhausts the electorate and raises the stakes of every interaction, making neighbors view one another as combatants. The Election of 1860 was the immediate trigger of the Civil War because the South refused to accept Abraham Lincoln's victory as legitimate. They believed his presidency posed an existential threat to their way of life. Similarly, the Weimar Republic crumbled because nearly half the electorate voted for parties (Nazis and Communists) that rejected the democratic system itself. The events of January 6, 2021, mark the most significant intersection of these historical trends in American history. The storming of the US Capitol was not a random riot; it was the culmination of months of "Stab in the Back" mythology regarding the 2020 election. It demonstrated that a significant portion of the electorate had been convinced that the democratic process was a sham. When faith in the ballot box dies, the street is the only venue left for contestation. This is the precipice upon which we now stand. In the 1850s, Southern politicians openly discussed the necessity of violence to protect their interests. In Weimar, SA brought violence to political rallies. Today, we see a rise in stochastic terrorism—violence sparked by demonizing rhetoric but carried out by "lone wolf" actors. The shooting at a Congressional baseball practice in June 2017, which critically wounded House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump in July 2024, and the 2025 assassination of Charlie Kirk are not anomalies. Together with the attack on Paul Pelosi in October 2022 and the plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, these events represent the predictable downstream effects of a discourse that paints political opponents as existential threats to be eliminated rather than rivals to be defeated.
Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that democracies survive not just on laws, but on norms—specifically, "mutual toleration" and "institutional forbearance." Forbearance is the restraint from using every legal tool available to destroy your opponent. In the 1850s, forbearance died when the Supreme Court issued the Dred Scott decision in 1857, attempting to impose a pro-slavery win permanently. In Weimar, forbearance died when Hindenburg abused Article 48. Today, forbearance is on life support. We see it in the tactical use of the debt ceiling to threaten economic collapse, the blocking of Supreme Court nominations (as seen in 2016), and the weaponization of impeachment. When political actors view the other side as an existential threat, they justify breaking the unwritten rules to stop them. But once the unwritten rules are gone, the written ones rarely survive long.
The history of the 1850s and Weimar Germany is tragic, but it is not a prophecy. It is a diagnosis. The United States in 2025 has advantages that neither of those eras possessed. We have a deeper, older democratic tradition than Weimar. We do not have the fundamental economic divide of slavery that split the 1850s (though economic inequality is a significant stressor). However, the mechanisms of erosion are active. The "Caning of Sumner" is happening metaphorically on social media every day. The "Stab in the Back" myth is circulating on our cable news and our X feed. The paralysis of the Reichstag is mirrored in our Congress. The lesson from these eras is that democracy does not die in darkness; it dies in the bright light of day, often amidst the applause of a cheering crowd. It dies when the "center" becomes a place of weakness rather than strength. It dies when citizens decide that defeating their neighbors is more important than preserving the system that allows them to coexist.
To get off this path requires a conscious rejection of these mechanisms. It requires punishing, rather than rewarding, politicians who violate norms. It requires consuming media that challenges rather than confirms our biases. And most importantly, it requires recognizing that the person on the other side of the aisle is not an enemy to be destroyed, but a citizen to be persuaded. If we fail to learn this lesson, history stands ready to teach us, once again, exactly how the story ends.
Darrell Lee is the founder and editor of The Long Views, he has written two science fiction novels exploring themes of technological influence, science and religion, historical patterns, and the future of society. His essays draw on these long-standing interests and apply a similar analytical lens to politics, literature, artistic, societal, and historical events. He splits his time between rural east Texas and Florida’s west coast, where he spends his days performing variable star photometry, dabbling in astrophotography, thinking, napping, scuba diving, fishing, and writing, not necessarily in that order.