A house divided against itself: America simmers

0:28The Economist in Greenland. Our correspondent was there to hear him repeat a geopolitical message that he's been making alone for years. At last, it's resonating. And around 75 years ago, a shepherd discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls in a desert cave. Though scholars have poured over these extraordinary documents, they've struggled to work out exactly how old they are. Now technology is coming to their aid.

1:02But first...

1:07Belter stalked his victims like prey. He went to their homes, held themselves out as a police officer, and shot them in cold blood.

1:21After a two-day manhunt in Minnesota, Vance Bolter was found and charged with murder this week. He allegedly killed Melissa Hortman, a Democratic state representative, and her husband. He's also charged with the attempted murder of another Democratic lawmaker and his wife. Mr. Bolter had far wider plans. Police found his list of 45 state and federal officials. This kind of lone wolf partisan violence is all too common in America's historical record. But consider also, in the same weekend, the largest protests in the country in years. No kings. No tyrants. We will not be silenced. No kings. No tyrants.

2:05We will not be silenced. The message, no kings, is a response to what demonstrators see as Donald Trump's view of an all-powerful presidency.

2:18in about 2 000 separate events across the country millions of people turned out even in republican strongholds the proximate cause troops on the streets of los angeles earlier this month it's easy to see america as more than just simmering to think that some tragic boiling over is just about inevitable. So I wanted to talk to John Priddo, our United States editor and the host of Checks and Ballots, our sister show on American politics, about his view on what lies ahead. The murders and attempted murders in Minnesota were profoundly shocking and at the same time a reminder of how violent American politics can be and unfortunately not hugely surprising.

3:09It's not that long ago since the Republican candidate, now President Donald Trump, was almost assassinated in Butler, Pennsylvania. And if you talk to American politicians in public life, even on the state level, the amount of threats they have to put up with just to go about their daily business, it's pretty shocking. There's a suggestion in what you said there that there's a certain unsurprising element to what we see now, but it has to be said that the political temperature is far higher now than even a few months ago. I think that's right, Jason, but I think it's also easy just to discount or forget things that happened fairly recently.

3:52I remember the first political shooting in America I wrote about was the assassination attempt of Congressman Gabby Giffords more than a decade ago. And so these events happen in America and they shouldn't and they do. And that is partly a result of the familiar mix of extreme partisanship and online loathing plus a heavily armed populace. I would say what is perhaps different this time around or what has changed over the past few years, and we saw this in the attempt to kidnap the the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, is that there are more and more threats against state level representatives.

4:33I think it's both the case that state representatives can be more high profile these days than used to be the case. And if you're a state representative in Minnesota, you don't benefit from the kinds of security that you would if you were a member of Congress. And so I think that's a really unwelcome change that we're seeing. But Jason, I think you might be getting at something slightly different, which is that this phase we're in in the Trump presidency, troops on the streets in Los Angeles, millions of people protesting, it does all feel like something could go very wrong very fast. And we could end up either in a long, hot summer in the same way that we had in 2020, or even worse than that, something more from the 1960s with confrontations between protesters and armed soldiers on the streets of America in the worst case scenario.

5:25When we spoke on the show about troops on the streets in LA, you came to the conclusion that essentially that is a fight that President Trump wanted that ultimately it politically benefited him. This is carrying things further. There is no way that anyone wants or should want this kind of political violence. No, I think that's right. And you saw some condemnation from President Trump what happened in Minnesota. At the same time, it's quite remarkable how swiftly American politics has moved on to the next thing. Had there been unrest at the weekend at the No Kings protests, that could well have benefited Donald Trump.

6:02Actually, there wasn't. There were a very large number of people out on the streets, hundreds of cities, and they were almost entirely peaceful as far as I can see. So I don't think Donald Trump got the confrontation that he perhaps wanted. and so I don't think this is going to benefit him. My contention is really that if you go back and look at the history of the crowd versus the police in American politics, it has tended to benefit the party of the right when things have got out of control because a really important question in American politics is who gets to stand for order and Donald Trump wants to stand for order.

6:40At the mention of the No Kings protest, it was sort of remarkable in the beginning of Trump's second election, term, how little protest there was. What does it tell you that we're starting to see that now? Is it just in reaction to the particularly egregious things that the protesters think the president has done or has a protest movement finally kind of coalesced? I think if you compare with the beginning of the first time, Donald Trump's election came as a real shock to Democrats. They were particularly shocked by some of the things he'd said on the campaign trail, particularly the infamous Access Hollywood tape.

7:14And so then early in 2017, you had the very large Women's March protests. And I think there was a real sense of surprise and outrage and people in the democratic half of America wanting to stand up for values that they thought were being threatened by Donald Trump. I remember going and reporting on those marches and often you'd see parents taking their children along, their daughters in particular. and it was almost a protest about values as much as it was about politics. After 2024 and the election then, things were very different. I don't think Democrats were particularly surprised to lose to Donald Trump.

7:51Trump won the popular vote. It felt like a decisive result in the way that 2016 didn't quite. And I think that left lots of Democrats, people on the left in America, pretty shell-shocked and pretty resigned nearly six months into Donald Trump's presidency. I do think that's changed. I think the approach that Donald Trump has taken to the Constitution, to this expansive view of executive power, I think a protest movement has coalesced around that. But it's a notably polite protest. Talking to our reporters who are out and about in various American cities over the weekend, talking to protesters.

8:28Some of them have memories of anti-government protests in the 60s and the Vietnam era. They're older, they're well-behaved, they're not going to cause too much trouble. This quasi-constitutional form of protest, I'm not sure that's an idea that is going to bring tens of millions of people out on the streets. Maybe I'm wrong. You don't seem as concerned as many do about the rising political temperature, the likelihood of political violence, because in a sense, you're a student of history. You've seen America go through periods this bad and worse. What lessons can we take from those history books about how America gets past these periods of extreme partisanship, the kind that can actually spill into violence?

9:09I would say the lesson, if you go back to the 19th century, is that one side wins and that ends partisanship. It's not that the two parties get together after the civil war and are more friendly and you have more bipartisanship. No, the Republican Party basically crushes the South and the Democratic Party and it stays crushed for decades. I think if you think about the 1960s and how the country got past that extraordinarily violent decade, there was some bipartisan legislating and then on the presidential level, you had a long period of Republican dominance. So the nice answer would be that these periods of extreme partisanship end with compromise.

9:57I don't see much evidence for that in American history. So I don't have a happy story to tell you about that. John, thanks as ever for taking the time. Thanks, Jason.

10:26Well, it was an extraordinary trip. It wasn't the longest trip. It lasted a day. Sophie Petter is The Economist's Paris bureau chief. The French president Emmanuel Macron's plane touched down on a foggy day in Nuc, at the capital of Greenland. It was a great chance to me and to spend time together. It was a pretty gray scene when we arrived. But he was greeted warmly by Denmark's prime minister and the Greenland prime minister, who were both there on the tarmac. And the first thing they all did was to board a Danish frigate, which had been patrolling in the region. There was a band on the warship to greet them.

11:10That was a pretty symbolic moment to be on a warship, given the threats that Denmark and Greenland have been receiving. And the trio then took off together by helicopter to fly over some of the island's melting ice caps. That's a real issue in Greenland and the images are quite dramatic.

11:33And I think that the symbolic show of support for the island's sovereignty was very clear. There were people who were quite excited to get a glimpse of mackerel. That was interesting to see as well. really in a warm crowd cheering at one point and applauding when Macron said that Greenland is not for sale. That Greenland is not to be sold, not to be taken. But at the same time, one of the onlookers that I spoke to told me that actually she was pretty anxious about Greenland's security. I don't feel safe when the president of the United States, he comes with these words. And do you think that the French president can help with that?

12:18I don't know. I really don't know. But I hope so. So, Sophie, to your mind, why do you think Mr Macron made this trip now? Well, I think there are two ways of looking at it. On one level, this was clearly a message to Donald Trump, who he was about to see at the G7 meeting in Canada, to say, hands off, you know, don't come close to fulfilling the threats that you have made to annex the territory or buy it for that matter. And that it was a show of support for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Danish territory, which is what Greenland is. But I think on a different level, there is something a bit broader at play.

13:04And I think what Macron was trying to do was also send a message to Europeans to say that European strategic autonomy, this is this grand idea he's had for years ever since he was elected president, is something that we all need to think about. And Europeans have to do more to protect themselves. And when you're out there in Greenland, you really have a sense that you're in the middle of an extremely geostrategically important region where both current threats and potential new threats from different big players in the world come together at this extraordinary sort of geographical point. But why does Greenland fit into Mr Macron's picture of strategic autonomy?

13:46Well, I think he would say there are two parts to that. One of them is to do with the fact that the island is home to so many of the critical minerals that are needed for European industrial supply chains if they are to start reshoring more of the critical inputs. So that's one point. But I think the other is that it's a territory which traditionally has been under the American security umbrella. There is an American base, which J.D. Vance, the American vice president, visited earlier this year on Greenland and Denmark, which it belongs to as part of the Danish realm, has traditionally looked to transatlantic security for its own defence needs.

14:29So the fact that you have two parts to this, the Danish and the Greenland, rethinking their security makes it in some ways, I think for Macron at least, a sort of test of whether Europe can do more to guarantee the security of that territory and of the European Union more generally. So if this trip was more than just about optics, there was some diplomacy going on, what are the conversations being had behind closed doors? Well, I think that the conversations are pretty concrete. In fact, you had at the end of the day a declaration by Macron that he would want to think about doing joint exercises in the region.

15:11He's about to open a French consulate in Nuke. He wants to make sure that French support is not just words. The Danish prime minister stressed that there is a real need to cooperate on Arctic security. I mean, the Danes are worried about Russia's expanded military capabilities in the region and potentially China's ambitions there too, as the ice melts and maritime routes are opened up. So I think, you know, both France and Denmark would say that they still want to cooperate with America over this. the threats from China and Russia are greater or ought to be than the threat from Trump to annex Greenland.

15:49But at the same time, they realize they need to work on two tracks here and they need to do more together. And that, I think, is what they came up with in public at the end of the day, as well as in their private discussions. And so it sounds as if all of these leaders then have taken on the notion of strategic autonomy that used to be Mr. Macron's alone. Well, I think it's become a commonplace conversation at European capitals. And going from there to going to a situation that Macron would consider a decade-long project to build up European capabilities is a big step. And there's a lot of questions that are still out there, like what sort of defence kit are European countries buying?

16:31Denmark has traditionally bought American, like as has Poland or Germany, other European countries as well. France would like other countries to buy European now as part of that project. So I think that the debate has moved forward. But there is also a question for Macron himself. And that is, if he wants to remain credible on this subject, and he's made it his political baby in a way, he also needs for France to step up on defence spending. And that's particularly difficult at the moment, given how strained French public finances are. So we saw a lot of warm words and some crowds being so welcoming in Nuke.

17:12But at the end of the day, there is a question about hard cash and real proper defence spending behind all of the sunny images that we saw in the Greenland fjord. Sophie, thanks very much for your time. Oh, you're very welcome. Thanks for your interest, Jason.

17:48In 1947, a young Bedouin shepherd in the Judean desert just east of Jerusalem left his flock to search for a runaway goat. On a steep hillside, he noticed a cave. Intrigued, he threw a stone inside and heard something break. That may sound like the plot of an Indiana Jones film. But the man had stumbled across the first pots containing the Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of ancient texts hidden in a network of desert caves. It was an astonishing discovery. But ever since, scholars have argued over exactly how old they are and how we should interpret them. For more than half a century since the scrolls were first discovered, there's been a lot of uncertainty about exactly how old they are.

18:38Emily Steinmark is a science correspondent for The Economist. Dating the individual scrolls has been incredibly difficult for the scholars that do this. They have had to go on a lot of just experience and implicit knowledge and not a lot of hard evidence because there aren't any dated documents in that time. And now, radiocarbon dating and AI may finally be able to provide an answer. So before this, how old did we think the Dead Sea Scrolls were? Well, we've known for a while that they date to between 300 BC and 200 AD, so a time span of about 500 years. And that remains true today. But the problem was that we weren't able to say when these scrolls were written within that time period, which is obviously pretty large.

19:28What's actually happened is that they've been able to place specific scrolls within that 500 year time frame. So how has AI been able to do this? It's all about the handwriting. So we can see this today, like, you know, our grandparents probably wrote in a different way to what we do now. And it was the same back then. So every single one of these scrolls, they're mainly written in Aramaic and Hebrew. They were written by a person, by a scribe. And scholars have long looked at handwriting to try and date them and place them within this time window. And the idea behind the model, which is called Enoch, after an ancient Jewish science hero, basically does the same thing.

20:08These algorithms can pick up the ink traces from the scrolls and try and measure little angles and shapes in the individual characters and the letters. And they combine these two things in the new Enoch model so that the model was able to connect the radiocarbon dates, which are this physical estimate of the dates, with the style of handwriting. So has this model cracked the case? What they can see is that the scrolls generally tend to come out 50 to 100 years older than the best estimates done by human paleographers. So those are the scholars that usually look at handwriting to analyse it for age.

20:48And how much does it matter when these scrolls were from? What does that really tell us? Well, I think that the scholars are particularly excited about this idea that you could get close to or closer to perhaps the people that wrote the original biblical books. So one of the key findings from this paper is that Enoch analyzed two scrolls which contain fragments from the Hebrew Bible, specifically the books of Daniel and Ecclesiastes. And what it's done is that it's pushed back the date on those books like it has done for most of the scrolls. And now the date estimates for those scrolls overlap with when scholars think that the original authors of those biblical books, the actual books that make the Bible, were active.

21:36So for the book of Daniel, scholars believe that it was finished around 160 BC, and for the book of Ecclesiastes, it will be around the third century BC, if Enoch's right. That basically means that those Dead Sea Scrolls are not only the earliest surviving copies of biblical books, but could actually have been written when the Bible was written. So could these actually be fragments of the Bible? When I spoke to the researchers about this, they don't want to say either way. It's a very provocative question to say we have the original Bible. But I think, you know, based on the quality of the script, they think it's probably unlikely that it is the actual authors of the Bible.

22:22They think it's more likely contemporary copy. So, for example, the original authors reading aloud from their biblical books and scribes in the audience taking down notes, writing, copying what they were hearing. But even that is extremely exciting to them because that means you're now basically in the social circle of the people that wrote the Bible. That's just astonishing. Emily, does this have implications for other dating, for other sources that we might want to be looking at? Totally. I mean, any kind of collection of old manuscripts that you have, you could do a similar thing. and so that could teach us not just about literacy and the spread of religious thought or the beginning of these very sacred texts in Israel-Palestine region and Judaism and Christianity but elsewhere too.

23:12Other religions or other non-religious texts, all of that is up for grabs but we also have to remember that this is not the end-all and be-all, you know, carbon dating is very good, it's getting better but it will depend on how much data is available and how we choose to interpret those studies. Enoch cannot tell us the fragment of the book of Daniel that we have is the literal first edition of the Bible. It cannot tell us that. Historians will still have to argue for what they believe in that particular context. Absolutely fascinating. Emily, thank you so much. Thank you.

24:02That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. We'll see you back here tomorrow.