We Do Not Have To Do This

We all lose if the US descends into political violence. There is a better way.

I am in New York. It’s a beautiful autumnal day, Central Park is full of people walking terrible little dogs, the city wakes with its normal bustle; it is also 9/11. There will, I presume, be memorials and remembrances throughout the day, but the sense of normalcy does seem to mark that event’s gradual fading from a national tragedy into a private one. If there is any palpable sense of anxiety, it arises not from the trauma of that past tragedy but from the new one unfolding today, as our republic slips into a state of increasingly normalised political violence. Unlike 9/11, however, this is a tragedy that we are inflicting on ourselves—not on our domestic political opponents, but on ourselves and all of our fellow countrymen. We do not have to do this.

We are truly, massively, world-historically privileged. I use that word advisedly. From the foundation of our country we Americans have enjoyed a private law unknown to others: to be citizens of a republic with guaranteed rights in a world of kingdoms and petty despotates, and more recently to be rich beyond measure, tasting the first drops of something that looks very much like post-scarcity while the rest of the world still struggles. Some of this is down to an awesome run of luck, much of it was bought with our ancestors sweat and blood. This is not something to be thrown away.

To engage in, to call for, to normalise political violence is to throw this away. There is no good future here. You will not kill all the bad people and usher in your preferred flavour of revolution/restoration; at best, we will become Northern Ireland. Generations will be traumatised and economic growth will be virtually non-existent. We will be poorer and life will be worse and neither side will get anything out of it. At worst—at worst, I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that we would destroy modernity. Supply chains could be broken, advanced manufacturing could grind to a halt, standards of medical care could regress drastically in the absence of supplies; more would die of disease and malnutrition than in combat or collateral damage. Even if Europe and East Asia keep their societies and tech stacks intact through an American collapse (by no means guaranteed), the entire world would be a poorer and more violent place in ways that could take centuries to recover from. Other scenarios too are bleak. Imagine a world in which the United States destroys itself but the rest of the world manages to go on. The race for AGI, space travel and settlement, and life extension technology could go on without us as we slide into our new role as a violent backwater, the sick man of the world. That future would mean that you, your children, and your countrymen would have no say in shaping the future—another element of that private law we have come to take for granted. Whatever you think you will gain from civil war is not worth that.

Charlie Kirk did not deserve to be assassinated.

Charlie Kirk also made a career out of escalating the politicisation and polarisation of the American information ecosystem. Even if he, on some level, sought out open and honest debate as a way of changing hearts and minds, he raised the salience of America’s political divisions for his audience, and for every person like him there are ten more cashing in by preaching to increasingly paranoid and strung-out choirs. Kirk was a preëminant exponent of the right, but no side is innocent in this matter, and most of us are guilty in our small ways, myself included.¹ I have become increasingly convinced that if we as a nation are to step back from the ledge we find ourselves on, we are going to have to reverse this trend of partisan politics suffusing our entire lives. We have to reject politics-as-entertainment, argument-as-hobby, and political-alignment-as-primary-identity. After some reflection late last year, I made the decision to no longer make top-level tweets and blog posts about object-level partisan politics and have mostly stuck to that. I would, in general, encourage others to do the same.

This is not to paper over real political differences or the challenges facing our country. The material base under this political-entertainment superstructure is real and it can hurt you. Nevertheless, engrossing our lives in posts and YouTube videos and TikToks about politics has done so little towards solving these issues, and has directly contributed to the atmosphere of fear and violence we now find ourselves in. If you do feel called to be engaged in politics, I would encourage you to volunteer on a political campaign in person. Knock on doors and actually engage with your fellow citizens. If you care about a particular issue, find (or start!) a group dedicated to advancing that cause rather than looking for candidates and totalising ideologies to carry your hopes and dreams. Where possible, find ways to build the things you care about entirely outside of the sphere of the state.

Getting out of this will, moreover, require us to divest from our culture of constant critique and defamation. My friend Vogel has repeatedly pointed out the toxic asymmetry of sharpening ever more languages of critique (sin, psychoanalysis, critical theory, etc.) while allowing our capacity for praise to atrophy. So much of the current environment of violence is downstream of an information environment that incessantly recounts the evil of whatever enemy is in the crosshairs. There are times when such critique is warranted and needful, but we have got to become as comfortable praising what is good in the world as defaming what is bad.

In this spirit, I will go out of my way here to praise both Nick Decker and Hasan Piker. One is a personal acquaintance, one is someone whose ideas I typically find repugnant, both have a history of flirting with encouraging political violence. Both have, however, at the very least, condemned the shooting and agreed that Charlie Kirk did not deserve to be assassinated. This, at least, is admirable.

One final note. A recent Jezebel article—in which the author describes paying someone via Etsy to curse Charlie Kirk—has been widely circulated as relevant to yesterday’s events. Having some relevant experience, I found myself fielding questions from several friends on the topic. The individual described themselves as a witch, and advertised cursing as a service. Whether the curse was “responsible” for yesterday’s assassination is, I think, a wrong question. The witch in question may have been a charlatan, and even if they were not, there are still plenty of other explanations for what happened. What is true regardless is that this was a deeply immoral and irresponsible use of magic that helped no one and will in countless ways blow back on the caster, the client, and everyone else who shares the world with them. Don’t do this. Don’t cast curses, and don’t hire someone else to do it for you. If you find yourself at all drawn to the occult, I would encourage you to 1) wear a protective charm, 2) integrate a disciplined practice of yoga or tai chi into your daily life, 3) find a religious community that is edifying and does not preach hatred, and 4) generally seek to cultivate peace in your own life before melding with other forces.

Take care of each other.

Blessed be.

1. If you cannot believe that both sides have contributed to our present troubles, I would encourage you to find it in your heart to repeat it anyway. Repeat it as a noble lie, as a sacrifice or concession, as something that will be indispensably necessary for all of us to set down our literal and rhetorical guns and deëscalate.