Dealing with Violence

In the wake of the murder of Charlie Kirk, rage and confusion is sweeping across the political world. Whatever you think of Kirk, that’s not a good thing for the forces of lightness and democracy.

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It has been not quite 24 hours since a gunman—still at large—shot conservative activist Charlie Kirk while he was giving a speech at an Utah college. Things have … deteriorated.

There aren’t any real “lessons” in events like this. The gunman may turn out to be a jilted lover or a fellow conservative enraged by some apostasy or another—or he could be, as nearly everyone seems to be assuming, a left-wing assassin. In any given act of violence, the motivations are generally a stew of politics, grievance, despair, and mental health dysfunction. A shooting almost always says more about the shooter than the victim. Nevertheless, these shootings almost always get interpreted in the broadest way, as some kind of comment on the essence of a political moment. That’s certainly the cast the mainstream media has taken in this case.

If any single incident acts as a poor metaphor for an age, spates of political violence, taken collectively, are more telling. A hundred years ago, as the age of empires was colliding with modernity, assassinations were common. When Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, it wasn’t a surprise—the heir to the Austrian empire had already been targeted, including earlier the same day of his eventual death. The 1960s were another moment, when bullets felled JFK, RFK, and MLK, among others.

Civic turbulence leads to violence, and the more unstable a society feels, the more violence seems like an effective solution. In the age of Donald Trump, we have seen a violent coup at the Capitol, attempts on the US Speaker of the House, the Governors of Michigan and Pennsylvania, and a state politician in Minnesota. Trump, for his part, has been an enthusiastic cheerleader for political violence.

“We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections … The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”

And:

“We have some very bad people; we have some sick people, radical-left lunatics. And it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by the National Guard—or, if really necessary, by the military.”

For decades, political violence was a taboo no one dared cross, but we’re entering a moment in which it will increasingly be seen as an obvious choice. Anger and fear are potent emotions, and when they are not reined in by societal norms, they take ever more aggressive form. Charlie Kirk’s murder—no matter who did it—will make the logic of violence all the more seductive. These are the times we live in.

Liberals have a hard time in moments like this, because they reject violence as a course of action, and are therefore confused about how to handle the murder of one of its advocates. (In one of those too-strange-for-fiction moments, Kirk was discussing political violence when he was killed.) It’s actually not that hard: Kirk was a malignant force in the body politic, but killing a person like him is the wrong way to address his malignancy.

If you like pragmatic, brass-tacks reasons, consider strategy. Violence is the lubricant of fascism. Violence is pure emotion, a destructive force given form by bigotry and hate. It is antithetical to democracy and the rule by law, which are institutions of the mind and reason. The right wing in the U.S. wants to use violence. That should be a flashing red light: for the politically weak and dispossessed, violence is always a bad thing.

But I see a more personal reason to think twice about the efficacy of violence. Yesterday, as this news broke and the reactions poured in, I watched my own emotional state. I also fizzed and popped with rage. It was very messy and shameful: I didn’t immediately feel compassion for Kirk, the people who witnessed his murder, his family and friends. I felt a mean little sense of satisfaction. From that place, I saw anger flower, and it was soon clear to me how violence is just stop a little further down the road I was traveling. I saw that what was happening in my mind didn’t have anything to do with Kirk—I was the one fueling the rage.

Living in this polarized, violent world, the waves of anger constantly reverberate around us. I know that I personally don’t want to commit my emotional state to this anger. It’s so incredibly unpleasant. It’s also not helpful as an organizing principle for those of us who want to save the democracy. Losing our rational minds, conceding to the impulse to hate and destroy—these will not rebuild our healthy democracy.

It’s also not the place I want anyone to live. we all deserve better. Find someone you love and hug them. Take a walk and look at the natural world. Turn off the radio; get off Reddit or Bluesky. Breathe deeply and exhale the anger. Let it go. You don’t have to hold on to it to save America. There’s no virtue in being mad. And there’s certainly no joy there. We have a long road ahead. Take care of yourselves.