political violence has sadly been a part of this country since its founding but right now many

people feel it's a disturbing trend on a sharp and dangerous upswing david de papy broke into the

pelosi home asking where is nancy the same words uttered by capital intruders who threatened the speaker.

Such acts started ramping up long before the midterm elections, and the people who study it are worried.

One group wants to get real and talk about what's really going on in the country and reject and renounce political violence.

And the other side wants to turn to blind eye.

That's exactly the sort of dangerous and precarious situation that our democracy is in.

Like, really worried.

This is going to be the end of the voting season, but it's only the beginning, the potential violent threats to democracy.

I'm Gustavo Ariano. You're listening to The Times, Essential News, from the LA Times.

It's Monday, November 14, 2022. Today, this rise in political violence, is it just part of American democracy?

Or is it the beginning of its end?

Melanie Mason is a national political correspondent for the Los Angeles Times.

Melanie, welcome the Times.

Thanks for having me.

So Election Day came and went and thankfully there were no reports of violence.

But a lot of people did fear that something like that was going to happen.

But then you read history books, and well, things have been pretty bad throughout American history and trying to defend our democracy from within.

So how bad are things right now compared to other eras?

Political violence has always ebbed and flowed throughout this country. But what is unusual

about this time is that, A, there's a lot of potential targets for violence. I mean,

what's what we saw with these most recent elections? And so we saw that throughout the country,

...