 and Senate. In other words, the problem with Congress is that its members are apathetic. Unlike their counterparts for much of the antebellum era, they no longer see Congress as an important space over which they should fight. This is because the institution no longer plays a central role in making policy. Its members instead see administrative agencies and federal courts as more appropriate venues in which to make decisions, especially controversial ones.
Yet even now, political conflict does not inevitably turn into violence. There are three reasons for this. First, these are not violent times, comparatively speaking. Second, political conflict and violent conflict are not two sides of the same coin. They are separate phenomena. And third, members of Congress who are unwilling to expend the effort needed to legislate are also unlikely to fight.
Underlying all three reasons for today’s lack of violence, despite the crumbling space in which politics occurs, is the extraordinary growth of the administrative state. If, as Hannah Arendt observed, bureaucracy is the “rule of nobody,” violence is irrelevant. The American people can’t hold anonymous bureaucrats accountable in elections for the decisions they make. Related to that, frustrated members, much less the people they represent, can’t punch anybody.
The Field of Blood is an engaging account of an oft-ignored period in congressional history. And it underscores the importance of space to the practice of politics. However, it should be read with a firm understanding of the proper relationship between politics and violence, and the role conflict plays in both.
Congress does not need to relive the days of violence portrayed by Freeman. But it desperately needs more members willing to participate in politics; to legislate. That means more members who are willing to tolerate conflict—and not just the simulacrum of it we see on Sunday morning talk shows. And it means more members who, if push comes to shove, are willing to throw, or take, a punch on behalf of their cause, if for no other reason than it signals that they think what happens in Congress matters.