THE NEW YORK TIMES: In an anxious moment for the nation, historians say this one is different

Tanks will roll down Constitution Avenue in Washington, DC, this weekend to celebrate the Army’s 250th birthday. Demonstrations are being staged in all 50 states to protest immigration raids and President Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles. And war has widened in the Middle East after Israel’s lethal attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities and its leaders.

The nation is a cauldron of anxiety and anger as it enters the weekend at a moment recalling some of the darkest periods of its history.

This country has faced — and survived — spasms of tension and disruption before. Debate and disagreement, as well as military and even domestic conflict, are knitted into its history and DNA, from the Civil War to the anti-war demonstrations of the 1960s (not to mention two world wars, the assassinations of four presidents and 9/11).

But two things, many historians suggest, distinguish this moment from other troubled times in our past. The first is the sheer number of conflagrations taking place at once — not only in the United States but also around the world. In Los Angeles, Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., was pushed to the ground and handcuffed Thursday after trying to confront Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about the immigration raids. Hours later, Israel launched its first airstrikes on Iran, and Iran retaliated Friday, launching scores of missiles, some of which broke through air defenses in and around Tel Aviv, Israel.

“We live in highly disruptive times,” said Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and the founding director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. Even before this week, Naftali argued, the world order was destabilized as Trump tore up trade deals and foreign alliances, and the United States, Russia and China moved to “take advantage of worldwide changes for their own interests, adding to the velocity of disruption.”

The second thing is Trump himself. At fraught moments such as this, it normally falls to the president to step up as the reassuring figure, whether it was George W. Bush heading to downtown Manhattan after the destruction of the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001, or Bill Clinton going to Oklahoma City after a truck bomb destroyed a nine-story federal building and killed 168 people in 1995.

Not Trump. When California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, protested the dispatching of the National Guard to Los Angeles, the president responded by ordering even more members of the Guard to the city, followed by a contingent of Marines. Told that the “No Kings” weekend protests might spill into Washington on Saturday, Trump warned that anyone trying to interfere with his military parade, which coincides with his 79th birthday, will be met with “a very big force.”

“What really stands out to me now is that the biggest source of chaos is the president himself,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of political history at Princeton University. “Rather than acting as a force to try to bring some kind of reconciliation, calm and stability, he is fueling the fires.”

Naftali argued that Trump could “end most of the tension single-handedly.”

“But he revels in confrontation, and he is resentful and vengeful in a way he wasn’t quite in 2017,” Naftali said. “No wonder many Americans are on edge when our commander in chief is determined to put tanks on the streets of D.C. and eager to declare emergencies to send masked and armed federal or federalised forces almost everywhere else.”

Perhaps the fact that the nation has endured difficult times before should offer a note of comfort.

But perhaps not. “The fact these moments have happened before signals the fragility of the democracy, rather than its inevitable ability to endure,” Zelizer said.

Enjoy your weekend.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2025 The New York Times Company