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Well, when you thought the week was boring...
Charlie Kirk was just shot at an event, shooter in custody. There's apparently a video going around of the attack, but I haven't a desire to see it. People who have seen it are suggesting he was shot center mass in the neck, and is likely dead. That makes this the second time that a shooter targeted a conservative political figure at a political event in two years. If Trump hadn't moved his head at the last second, it would've been him, too.
I've never followed the young conservative influencers much, but Kirk always seemed like the moderate, respectable sort -- it's wild that he would be the victim of political violence and not someone like Fuentes.
I fear this is what happens when the culture war is at a fever pitch. Political violence in the US is at heights not seen since the 1970s, from riots in the 2010s and especially 2020 over police-involved shootings, to the capitol riot in 2021, to the attempted assassination of Trump in Pennsylvania, to the United Healthcare killing, to finally this murder of a political influencer. I fear for my country when I look at how divided we are, and how immanently we seem to be sliding into violence.
I guess I just find politics tiring nowadays. I vote for a Democrat and they do stupid things that conspicuously harm the outgroup. I vote for a Republican and they do stupid things that conspicuously harm the outgroup. Whether J.D. Vance or Gavin Newsom wins in 28, there will be no future in which Americans look each other eye to eye.
I actually believe things are much better in this country than people think: our economy is surprisingly resilient, we've never suffered under the kind of austerity that's defined post-colonial European governance, our infrastructure, while declining, actually functions in a way that most of the world isn't blessed with, our medical system is mired in governmental and insurance red tape yet the standard of care and state of medical research is world-class, our capacity to innovate technologically is still real and still compelling, and one of our most pressing political issues, illegal immigration, exists solely because people are willing to climb over rocks and drift on rafts simply to try and live here.
We have real problems. And intense escalations on the part of our political tribes are absolutely in the top five. We also have a severe problem with social atomization -- and these two things are related -- which has led to our intimate relationship and loneliness crisis, the rapid decline in social capital, and the technological solitary confinement of the smartphone screen which dehumanizes people like real solitary confinement while confining them to the most intense narrative possible. "If it bleeds, it leads" means that many will be led into bleeding.
I don't know how we rebuild the world, or come to a point where Americans of different views can view each other as well-intentioned. But Kirk is just the latest victim of a crisis that I don't know if there's any way to solve.
Given how many guns there are in private hands in the US, given how politically polarized the US is, given how many people have mental health problems, and given how extremely rare assassinations are, I am surprised that this kind of thing does not happen much more often.
Those who use such incidents to either make calls for revenge against their out-group or to celebrate the success of their in-group, both of which I am seeing a lot of on social media right now, expose themselves as likely having longed for violence to begin with - an impulse which then gets an opportunity to make itself public when something like this happens.
If one genuinely wishes to quell the rise of political violence, one would do well to realize that incidents like this are a statistical inevitability given the current mix of guns + political polarization + mental health issues. The only way to actually reduce the violence, as opposed to increasing it, is to reduce one or more of the three factors: guns, political polarization, and mental health issues.
Unlike with street crime, improved policing cannot significantly affect the issue. People who are willing to attempt assassinations are generally willing to get arrested or die in the process, so are simply not nearly as deterred by the prospect of encountering police as ordinary street criminals are. Would-be assassins are also less likely to have a track record of serious crime than the typical street murderer is, so are less likely to have been put away by policing before they attempt an assassination.
As far as I can tell, there is no other way besides reducing one or more of guns, political polarization, and mental health issues. Neither side of the political divide is powerful enough to suppress the other to the point that the other cannot attempt assassinations basically whenever one of its members finds the will to give it a try. Not without a massive civil war, at least. And a civil war, of course, would increase the violence by a factor of thousands, not reduce it, and would leave the country extremely damaged no matter which side won.
The people who usually commit violence in society don't have the interest and skillset to engage in organized political violence.
Anti-socials are violent and impulsive but tend refocus to the next person who frustrates them or someone who has wronged them in a personal (and petty way).
Traditional serious mental illness (like schizophrenia) usually involves too much functional decline and disorganization.
Delusional disorder patients (like erotomanic) tend to focus on political causes or more general fears (like paranoia about their neighbors or the FBI).
Malignant narcissists for the last few decades have been focused on school shootings, but they are starting to shift to politics (bad).
General criminals wants to avoid the eyes of the government.
So what really needs to happen for substantive political violence is for more or less normal people to find it necessary. The rhetoric is starting to hit that point.
Once it starts the social contagion will likely lead to some snowballing....
Is it really bad for malignant narcissists to target politicians rather than schools? At least politicians know what they're getting into. If school shootings were genuinely replaced with single assassination attempts on random political figures, I would see that as a big improvement.
This is a terrible idea. A random school shooting is senseless violence. It passes like a hurricane and perhaps leads to some heated gun control debates. But violence that looks intertribal leads to civil war.
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