Political violence

2025-09-10

Charlie Kirk was assassinated today. I unfortunately got blindsided by the full gore video of blood spurting out his neck. I felt gross all day, until meditation. Overate a bunch to deal with it. I was reminded of the insanity of 2020 and what one wise man said:

And this is really unhealthy—not just for individuals, but for society. Because, again, all we have between us and the total breakdown of civilization is a series of successful conversations. If we can’t reason with one another, there is no path forward, other than violence. Conversation or violence.

It's getting worse. Today Poland also shot down some Russian drones in their airspace and invoked NATO Article 4. It's not Article 5, thank god, but still. The heat is getting worse.

And I can't claim to be better. Yesterday I felt joy at the bombing of the billionaire terrorist leaders of Hamas in Doha, Qatar. I've always been slower to that kind of thing than most and only remember truly celebrating like that when Osama Bin Laden was killed, but now, I don't know. There's still a rational case to be made for distinguishing between these, but it's getting murkier for me. Universal nonviolence is gaining appeal.