Violence is all I can think about these days.
The basic hierarchy of shelter is person > family > neighborhood > city > county > state > country > world. How can I not be riled up by what’s happening in mine? I have often wonder how can I talk about it sanely in this newsletter, without getting sucked into the cesspool of online hot takes and misinformation and quite frankly exhausting discourse that never fucking changes anything.
When a Big One happens (see also: January 6, 2021), I compulsively scroll, write, delete, and rewrite because the turmoil hits so close home. In my youth, I attended many a conference with people like the Project 2025 authors and Doug Wilson, of recent fame. My culture placed a high value “an eloquent young man who can defend the faith,” and certain relatives would have been a lot prouder of me if I had been more like Charlie Kirk.
He was a conservative provocateur, who absolutely did not deserve to be executed — and whose rage-baiting, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and mockery of political violence was also reprehensible and should not be sanitized in memoriam.
Here are some things I know:
I grew up in a culture that fantasized about another civil war — and it is a valid view that we are now smack-dab in the middle of one.
The counterpoint, of course, is that it is unorganized. Online ecosystems devoted to the radicalization of young men fuel this blaze. It’s hard to overstate what a watershed moment fringe groups already consider this.
In the United States, there are more guns than people.
Despite all the politicians ponying up with their boilerplate condolences, political violence is woven into the fabric of this country. It’s literally our number-two value behind the freedom to yap (which Kirk so loved to do).
Neither side of the political spectrum has a monopoly on said violence. In recent years, we’ve seen:
A shooting at a baseball game for Congress members (R)
A hammer attack on the then Speaker of the House’s husband (D)
An attack on the Capitol, with a mob calling for the hanging of the then Vice President (R)
Arson in the home of the governor (D) of Pennsylvania, with his family inside
Two assassination attempts on the President (R)
Lawmakers (D) in Minnesota shot and killed just last month
Of course, it goes back much farther than that — and because of the lone-wolf nature of most these incidents, it’s hard to say which of these was the modern Fort Sumter.
Before the blood is even dry, anonymous internet conspiracy theories fly: It was a blue-haired trans barista! It was our Reichstag fire! It was Mossad! He was a Groyper, and this was gang violence! Even now, as details emerge about the suspect’s conservative two-parent family of origin, we still have zero idea what his motives were.
It is ghoulish for the in-power group to use a senseless act of violence as a cudgel to declare war on its opponents as a “domestic, extremist organization” in the same breath they talk about toning down the rhetoric.
A few days ago, the President told Chicago it was “about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” Today, he said outright he “couldn’t care less” (a direct quote!) about bringing the country together. He followed that up with: “The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime. The radicals on the left are the problem, and they’re vicious and they’re horrible.”
Does moral superiority — or understanding the timeline, grievances, and nuances of “the sides” — matter when you are fighting for your life? Ask the Israelis and Palestinians about that one, I guess.
Although history tells us that evil must at times be crushed through force, I am still in a phase of my political and religious deconstruction that wants to cling desperately to a belief in non-violence.
I simply cannot stomach a country where neighbors are at war with each other instead of the techno-feudalist oligarchs who algorithmically tug on our marionette strings.
I sit here and wonder when the next Big One will come, and whether we will be able to summon the collective will to come back from the brink. Or if we will simply begin to care about political violence as much as we care about dead children in schools — which is to say not at all.
We vilify educators and experts in our society and delight in for-profit carceral and punitive solutions to problems we KNOW would be better solved by up-front investment in things like mental health, free lunch, sex education, and better infrastructure. But we can’t do that, you know, because sOcIaLiSm ¯\(ツ)/¯
For the LOVE OF GOD, why are so-called “pro-lifers” unwilling to try ANYTHING — from taking a class to passing a background check to giving up certain kinds of accessories and ammunition — to reduce the amount of needless death in this country? (While I’ve got you, check out Matthew 26:52.)
If Brown Jesus comes back, I feel confident it will be to rebuke these American pharisees who have made a false idol out of their political movement to the point that they are unrecognizable as Christians.
Sometimes the fire you stoke consumes you.
So: A war threatens to devour us. What should we pacifists do with that reality? I spend most of my time now wondering how I can protect and guide my children away from becoming either Charlie Kirk or the guy who shot him.
For now: If you, like me, have been unable to look away from this week’s car crash, I urge you to stop reading the internet comments, log off, and go do something tangible and good in your community.
10 Political Violence Experts on What Comes Next for America
Via POLITICO
Best line: Instead of seeking unity, we are witnessing the cynical minting of a martyr and a call to fight. Instead of shared grief, there are accusations of collective guilt, painting half the country as murderers. This dynamic is not exclusive to one party; a moment of silence in the House for Kirk degenerated into a shouting match. Our political leaders are pouring poison into the public well.
To be clear, a mass movement of political violence is not happening. For the past three years, I have tracked public support for political violence, and the data are unequivocal: fewer than 2 percent of Americans believe political murder is acceptable. The core problem is not a widespread desire for violence, but a profound misperception of the other side. …
There is one place where real progress is still possible. Most acts of political violence in America over the past two decades have been carried out by lone actors — young men radicalized online. The radicalization pipeline runs through a handful of American tech companies that remain almost entirely unregulated. If lawmakers were willing to curb the algorithms that amplify conspiracy theories, disinformation and hate, they could weaken the pipeline feeding violent extremism. After Charlie Kirk’s assassination, that may be the single most immediate lever left to pull. The question is whether America has the will to pull it before the violence grows worse.
The World Is Burning, But Want to Meet Up for Thirty-Four-Dollar Cocktails? by Sara K. Runnels for McSweeney’s
Best line: The Finch 75 sounds delicious too. It’s a double, so unfortunately, the “75” is the price, but we’ll just have one cocktail, I swear. Unless they’re so good, we have to have three or four?
Did I mention it’s a rooftop? It looks directly into several beige office buildings, but we’ll still feel like we’re on top of the world. Plus, it’ll give us some peace from the street-level chaos and dumpster fires, you know? Nothing makes me want to drink a fancy aesthetic cocktail more than what’s happening right now.
The kids in this Maine neighborhood use landlines instead of smart phones by Katie Delaney for News Center
Best line: When her then 9-year-old daughter Molly asked for her first cellphone, Morse said no. Instead, she decided to take a chapter from her parents' playbook and bought a landline instead. She gifted it to Molly on her 10th birthday.
Now, Molly and her 8-year-old sister Piper are embracing the throwback, rather than yearning for cell phones. For the past few months, the sisters have been twisting their fingers in the cord, dialing numbers all written down on a piece of paper, and calling their loved ones.
Lonesome spines: buyer sought for over 150,000 books and the one-time Yorkshire Dales youth hostel in which they’re housed by Damian Thompson for World of Interiors
Best line: One of Britain’s largest stocks of second-hand books ever amassed can be found in the unlikeliest of locations: a vast former youth hostel in a pretty corner of the Yorkshire Dales. Meticulously sorted into subject areas, from naval history to 19th-century literature, architecture to zoology, over 150,000 volumes fill some 25 high-ceilinged rooms spread over four floors. To withstand the sheer weight of all those hardbacks, the building, which began life as a prep school in c1878, must surely be as strong as a Romanesque church.
home tour
The experimental musician who turned a Cornish schoolhouse into a creative hub and home
By Amy Bonifas for The Modern House
Best line: The house, the garden and the incredible beauty of north Cornwall have been a constant inspiration for me. There’s a mystical, ancient quality to the moorlands, which begins at the top of the break that climbs up from behind the house. You’re free to walk anywhere on the moors, it being common land, and it stretches 30 miles behind the house. There have been many times where I have stumbled upon an ancient stone circle not even mentioned on the maps, or walked with wild ponies, or sat on a stone wall looking across to the sea in the distance. It’s the highest point in Cornwall.
Seth Putnam is an editor and writer in Chicago. He lives with his wife, son, and daughter in a 1920s home that is the epitome of a work in progress.
"Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." —Mary Oliver