A general response that might apply to a wide range of criticisms/response to this piece: When talking about these topics, I often get people responding to me who want to debate “who’s actually right” or “who’s actually more at fault” or "what group is actually worse." In my work, I make no claims about that (as I don’t think it’s productive; and it’s just not relevant to conflict resolution type work). What IS important to me is seeing how easy it is for rational, compassionate people to reach different conclusions about such matters, which I think is just very clearly the case. And I think it's important to see how reaching for team-based, us-vs-them approaches and contempt and anger (searching for definitive proof that "it's all their fault" or "see, they are worse, this proves it"), only ends up amplifying toxicity — and even ends up contributing to the very things about which we’re so angry/contemptuous.
We'll all believe what we believe about who's more at fault (that is natural and fine) -- but I think it's clear that you can continue thinking "one side is worse" (if that's what you believe) while also believing that it's extremely important to reduce toxicity and contempt and team-based thinking, because it's a self-reinforcing cycle.
I take what the "progressives" used to say is a "nuanced" approach. I am disdainful of both Trump and the feckless insults who the Dems have put on their tickets since Obama, and have cast write-in votes in reaction during the past three presidential elections.
I am quite critical of what comes out of the mouth of Archie Bunker Trump, but am even more critical of the blind hatred from the "progressives" who have seized control of the Democratic Party. No one gets anything but low marks from me, but I do think the Democrats have been worse.
I further think that the Democrats are on track to pay a steep price in the years ahead.
Another imbalance can be which group has the most power. Eg, in the case of Israel/Palestine, Israel is perceived as the one with the most power. This can lead to some defenders of the less-powerful group to embrace more aggressive approaches (and I think that is a factor in Republicans being more ok with Trump’s personality, as they perceived themselves fighting a much more culturally powerful “enemy”).
Do you think if Harris had won we’d see more examples of far right type violence? I do.
There are other factors. Eg, I do think liberal/progressive aims, because they are about pushing back against perceived society-wide outrages and injustices, can lead to some very angry worldviews — worldviews that manifest in different ways compared to conservative-associated anger. There’s also the fact that young politically active people skew more liberal (see colleges) - and younger people are more immature and more emotional and more prone to embracing extreme political/cultural thinking/approaches.
But just to say I think things are very complex and it’s easy to see what we seek to find, and there’s no sense/benefit to playing a blame game with what are an extremely small number of people.
Embracing this view also helps protect “your side” if things shift. You should be able to imagine a future where republicans lose and that kicks off all sorts of weird right-associated militant/violent things.
I think it's a better (meaning more salient) exercise to imagine a future where the Democrats have failed to retake the House in '26, lose the '28 presidential election, lose a dozen electoral votes after the '30 census and reapportionment, and wind up with an 8-1 Supreme Court and a wander in the wilderness comparable to 1869-1933.
What will the "progressives" do then? They don't realize it, but they have led the Democratic Party to abandon the old-school liberalism that kept the party together for the better part of 80 years. Democrats need to prepare themselves for a long, bitter cold political winter. How did the song go? Oh yeah, I remember now: "Don't it always seem to go / That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone."
ADDENDUM
The Democrats need a generic polling advantage of 5% to retake the House, or so the sharpshooters say. It's now at 1%-2%.
It's hard to overstate how depressing the failure to retake the House would be for the Democrats. You can count on the fingers on one hand the number of times when the president's party didn't lose at least some House seats in the mid-term elections. Given the narrow R control there now, a loss of seats would mean a change in control.
Even without redistricting in TX, CA, MO, OH and maybe IN, a 1%-2% generic lead won't cut it. If the redistricting wars go as expected, the Rs will have a net gain of 5 seats going into the mid-terms, maybe more. Fail to regain the House, and '28 will look quite grim, although presidential elections are determined by the strength of the economy between March and June of the election year. So I won't be able to place my bet until the unemployment rate is reported in July '28.
That said, I'd much rather be a Republican than a Democrat these days.
It's even more dishonest to limit your analysis to a single year. Expand the analytical window to a more broad-based three-decade baseline and you can clearly see that political violence is bipartisan. Just a small sampling of recent violence performed by those on the right-side of the spectrum
-2012 Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting (literally cited 'the left' as motivation)
-2009 murder of George Tiller (abortion)
-2008 Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church shooting (again literally citing 'the left')
...after that we can get into the Oklahoma City bombing in '95 and the many attacks on abortion clinics of the 90s.
Taken as a whole, the common element is *not* right/left--it is illiberalism, usually mixed with mental derangement. If we want to talk about violence since 2000, you can see most of them were motivated by conspiracy theories that the perpetrators were sucked into by social media. The attention economy and the dominance of algorithmically-manipulated media platforms is the biggest culprit here, as it is literally designed to agitate the paranoid and angry instincts that feed political extremism. Just look at the aftermath of the Kirk shooting--the most angry, despicable, attention-getting responses to it have been augmented on social media at the expense of moderate, measured, rational responses that, according to statistics, characterize most people's views, whether on the left or the right. And in the political arena somehow the sociopathic extremists on Twitter are being framed as representative of everyone who isn't on the right. (same happened when the Minnesota legislators were shot, only with the political affiliation flipped) The entire body politic has fallen into the social media rabbit-hole. It's the biggest political issue of our time, and it is going practically unaddressed by our political leaders--and, as in the case of our president's shameful response, being actively made worse by some.
"Free Palestine" is seen as a leftist cause because it is based on their oppressor/oppressed worldview. Palestinian Moslems are by definition oppressed because they are considered non-white, and their oppressors are by definition Israel, who is considered to be white in this context. Of course, white people are always and everywhere the oppressors. There is no consideration for who the Palestinians and the Israelis actually are, it's just a slogan like so many others the Left uses based on theoretical academic concepts they try to apply to far messier reality. They completely ignore the fact that Israel is a fairly liberal democracy that gives civil rights to all citizens, including gays and other "nonconforming" people, as well as Palestinians who have renounced violence. And that Palestinians, as Moslems, hate and kill gays. The Left's love for Islam is something I have never understood.
Someone has already posted many equally dangerous events by people on the right, which says something about your selective use of data, but I want to call your attention to another matter. That matter is whether you should examine the sources of your data.
For example, you indicate that "The man who firebombed Josh Shapiros house was also a "Free Palestine" nutjob."
Here is the Wikipedia entry on him:
During his arrest, Balmer was transported to a local hospital for treatment after suffering a medical episode.[11] Following Balmer's arrest, his mother Christie Balmer told CBS News that her son has schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and stated that he "went off his medication".[8][7] Balmer struggled with mental illness throughout his life and was hospitalized twice.[2]"
Balmer was described by his brother as a political independent until 2024, when he tried to convince his family members to vote for Donald Trump.[12"
He was a Trump supporter, not a leftist. Please re-examine all of your assertions for completeness and accuracy.
The editors and then the CEO took a sharp turn left a few years ago. Makes no difference on most things, but it's misdirecting on others. I still use wiki all the time but am aware that if the topic is in any way political the information might not be correct.
Thanks! Another poster referred me to an article that did a great study of wiki and found political bias. I can't tell from the article how strong it is, but I'll be more conscious of that now.
I can't even remember the last time I used wiki to search for a political topic, so I am like you!
A quick Google search will provide additional examples. I used to donate routinely to Wikipedia when I started noticing a distinct leftist slant in many current events entries. I stopped donating and use them for non-controversial items like “what is Jethro Tull’s discography?”
I tend to think that distrusting media/sources is not a bad thing; clearly there is a lot of bias everywhere we look. I think the main bad thing (team-based, polarizing thing) people do is hugely distrusting one set of sources reflexively, but then trusting other sets of sources that align with their existing views. E.g., a friend of mine who told me "I don't watch any mainstream media; they lie" and when I asked him where he gets his news, he told me "friends' posts on Facebook." That is an extreme example but I think many of us put up huge walls against some sources and no/minimal walls against other sources on "our side."
And nice thing I'd say about Wikipedia; even if you perceive some articles as biased (I definitely do); they have the footnotes and references for things, so you can go research it yourself. That is huge. This is why I think they provide a great service; why I donate money to them regularly.
(I do believe that distrusting everything in WIKI is a little on the conspiracy side)
Perhaps you can help me with this part. My question is how strong are the effects? In other words, what do the numbers ranging from 1- to 1 mean in practical terms? How many negative words are there in a wiki article about, say, Clinton that are positive versus negative.
In other words, what is the range or confidence interval average in these articles. One can, with enough data, find differences that are not too meaningful.
It looks like they would be meaningful from the data presented, but I wouid like like to know the "practical" difference.
Unfortunately I am not familiar with the specific statistical tests that the authors used, so I can’t have an informed answer on the relative significance of the numbers in Figure 7 for example. Doing a quick Google search on Cohen’s d gives a general guidelines that 0.2 is a small effect, 0.5 is a moderate effect and 0.8 is a large effect. (National University Academic Success Center statistics resources “Cohen’s d”). Now I know just enough to be dangerous.
More useful I’ve found is to look at trends. Nearly all the figures show a clear trend towards positive language for the “blue” and negative language for the “red”. It’s pretty consistent throughout. Now is any individual case significant in and of itself? Hard to say. But a trend where nearly all are heading the same way is troubling to me.
I haven’t stopped using Wikipedia entirely. I still use them for noncontroversial topics that I can cross check using other sources if something looks “off”. But Wikipedia can be very convenient, so the baby remains in the bath water.
I theoretically agree with your premise that both sides have to work hard to try and understand each other. I try to live this every day. But you completely failed in your arguments to support that we are where we are at because of an equal impact from both sides. The cultural pressure points from the left were way stronger on the average persons(voter) day to day life than the powers of government on the right over the past 15 years. The impact on a normal persons(voter) day to day life from social media to school to family interactions have all been tilted strongly to support the left over the past 15 years plus. They only began to crack with the Twitter sale and then with Trumps election over the past 8 months. All you have to look at to fully believe this is what happened during COVID. The left was strong enough to shut down this country way past the time that science could justify it and they impacted the schools such that we will have a generation of young people impacted negatively. When anyone questioned this they were told they were wanting to kill the grandmothers and grandfathers. COVID. Is just one example. There are many others from how DEI impacted people in their jobs to the violence that was tolerated in support of Black Lives Matter. Trump’s election was much more a reaction to what people are experiencing not an instigator. Until people see this we will be in trouble And finally I would attest it is way harder to find a person who has been shunned from their family because they were liberal then it is to find a person shunned from family and friend because they were conservative
There's a whole lot that's wrong here, but the claim that social media's impact has been 'tilted to the right' is completely wrong. Social media has been tilted towards political extremism, without any pattern of political affiliation. It has radicalized people on the left and the right and if you look behind any politically-motivated violent incident in the country in the past 20 years, you almost always find its influence.
Indeed, here's what people have to get their head around: the nexus of extremism here is not political, it is technological. The way social media has been designed, and the ruinous business model behind it (selling people's data to advertising consultancies for revenue) has made society as a whole more cranky and paranoid by elevating extreme, conflict-driven, attention-getting political behavior over cooperative, moderate behavior. You need merely ask yourself: what will get the most retweets? A moderate statement condemning Charlie Kirk's murder and calling for political reconciliation or an immoderate statement dancing on his grave, and/or blaming it on a faceless 'opposition' of pedophiliac Deep State saboteurs? Anyone whose spenty any time on Twitter knows the answer is the latter.
Multiply that dynamic to a global scale, and voila--extremism rises at the expense of moderation across the political spectrum.
I think things are very complex. For one, I think both “sides” have played a role in making the other more extreme and angry. I think liberal/anti-trump people can and do tell a story much like yours, which is quite compelling, about how Republicans became increasingly aggressive and unreasonable over the past few decades, culminating in support for Trump’s contemptuous approaches. Just to say, i think it’s easy to weave stories.
I read it. I can agree tribalism begets tribalism. That is why I try very hard not to fall into that and constantly try and see the others points. One issue I have found it is hard to get past is if there is not a common moral compass. As I look at what has happened over the past 50-60 years is that we in the us may be splitting apart on this. Not the majority but very very vocal minority having a very different moral compass.
100% - thanks for this great post! At lunch with a beloved progressive colleague the other day, her comment re: KIrk was "live by sword, die by the sword." When I asked her what sword Kirk had used to mow down his adversaries, she stared at me like she didn't know what I was talking about. When I told her that Robinson's partner was a trans woman, her immediate response was "OMG, now the trans community has a target on its back!" As correct as she is to fear retaliation against some innocent trans person at some later point, it was notable that she jumped right from one defenseless-victim position (targeted by Kirk) to the next (targeted by Kirk supporters). She did not pause a minute to OWN the grievous escalation in this national hate-fest with the killing of Kirk by a member of the trans community (which I'll call Robinson, since he loves a trans person). Of course the entire trans community cannot be tarred with Robinson's brush, but just as surely this is exactly the kind of behavior that the MAGA right will light upon to pursue its own agenda of aggrievement and backlash. There is plenty of blame to go around, and per the excellent comments of Minsky below, social media has a lot to do with it.
The problem with "plenty of blame to go around" is that, when that bromide gets thrown around, in the real world it becomes a deflection. The Democrats and the media will try to dig up the "nuance" that they did their best to kill, but I don't think that dog will hunt. Here's how I think it's going to go: The pendulum is now swinging the other way after having swing very far left on a wide range of cultural and political issues, Trump's two victories notwithstanding.
It's going to keep swinging, and after a while the right wing will be just as stupid, just as arrogant, just as embarrassing, and just as immoral as the left wing has been. I am not going to like it as it happens, but it's going to happen. It will happen because the "progressive" nomenklatura has been self-insulating, but not totally. America corrects itself, then over-corrects. In the meantime, I will engage in a good deal of schadenfreude, and later regret it. Hey, I'm only human. LOL
This “dominated the culture for at least the past decade, they control few levers of political power at this moment” understates the progressive dominance - far leftism (think pronouns in bio) still controls: most of the charitable non profit sector, the mainstream media (they just had a hiccup with Kimmel), every public education institution from Head Start to graduate schools, most elite private schools that aren’t evangelical, the arts and culture, 90% of corporate HR departments. The NFL and NBA are still doing the BLM schtik. While “deep state” is an overstatement, the entire infrastructure of government is dominated by leftist views and structures, especially in states with public employee unions (hence Covid school lockdowns lasting a year). And politically they control every major and medium sized city in the country, which is where people actually live. Portland is still a lefty soft totalitarian environment. Nothing’s changed here but the national news. Try saying “men can’t become women” or “all lives matter” or “equality not equity” out here. Career ends, house may be vandalized, doxxed on the internet.
You’ve mistaken the loss of some percentage of power (25%?) and the perception of greater federal importance for the total loss of all power. If Trump wasn’t such a media peacock preening and tweeting all the time, it wouldn’t feel like it does. Progressives still run just about everything - just not as much and just not as blatantly in some respects. They actually get told “no” here and there.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying. That part of the article was not meant to deny that liberals/progressives hold immense sway; that is a key point in my books, seeing that power differential (and a key point in trying to get liberals/anti-Trump people to see the importance of their working on depolarization). So it wasn't meant to say "the power is equal"; just that "the power is different; and that perceptions can swing based on who's currently in power in White House". But admittedly could have been worded better.
We really appreciate this article. It's in the liberal tradition of being willing to view all facts equally instead of through the lens of one's ideologies.
One insightful statement regarding our current situation, and why we will have so much difficulty getting beyond the us-vs-them mentality, was made by Thich Nhat Hanh, the great Vietnamese Buddhist monk :
"our greatest attachment tends to be to our opinions. We clutch on them as if they were jewels. It’s almost as if you had a right to kill somebody in self-defense if they contradict you"
This is why peoples' political opinions can result in family estrangement. Our opinions are more powerful to us than even members of our family are.
Alexis de Tocqueville argued that social pressure to conform with dominant opinion exceeded the power of even absolute monarchs.
56% of liberals think violence is fine against the other side.
3% of conservatives do.
This is not really a thing. When you add in the number of people murdered because of Democrat weak on crime/criminal encouragement programs (led by utterly crazy judges), the Hamas Murder Pirate contingent, and the trans movement? Nope. This is not a "both sides do it" at all. This is one side is dangerously close to becoming a party of terrorism. When that happens, the party should be banned like the Nazis in Germany.
Where did you get that stat? I'd direct you to research on that from people like Sean Westwood: https://behavior-podcast.com/no-there-isnt-high-support-for-political-violence-in-america-sean-westwood/. There is just a lot of bad information about support for violence out there; some of that is from bad surveys; some of that is from biased interpretations of surveys (bad or good). We will often filter for the things that support our framing. The truth is that a very small % on both "sides" support political violence. You should question if your willingness to embrace surveys that show otherwise is similar to liberal-side embracing of very pessimistic surveys/studies about conservatives/Republicans.
I am definitely struggling with this at the moment, I am center right, so I do not agree at all with the far left extremists. In fact, they do scare me. But I think that they are small in number, and I think the same of the far right extremists
The Charlie Kirk assassination and reactions to it had me questioning my thoughts. Maybe there are more of these extremists than I thought? I do not go on any other social media other than this Substack. I imagine if one does, you could go down that rabbit hole. So I’ve regained my center - any person who would do this is mentally unwell. I think the dehumanizing rhetoric thrown around by both sides can influence a mentally unbalanced person to commit a violent act.
The Liberal Patriot gives me hope … people here are balanced and I do believe we have more in common than we think … but we have to start with assuming the best in people vs the worst
It is impossible to understand our current situation, without contemplating the unprecedented 5 years that preceded it. We are a Republic by design. The US federal government is suppose to be remote and contemplative, as it moves at a glacial pace. There is a reason most Americans do not know their Congressional representatives by name. Historically, their actions, and those of the rest of DC, have rarely greatly affected American life, except in times of war.
That ended with Tump and Biden's Covid response. The pace and scope of change, is without precedent in US history. And for the first time since our founding, the US lacked a Press willing to challenge an out of control government.
With Covid, Americans were told a 3 week, never before seen loss of liberty, would counteract a disease, that would otherwise claim tens of millions of lives. It was one of the greatest fallacies in all of US history. When all was said and done, some restrictions lasted nearly 3 years, not 3 weeks, for a disease that was survived by 99.6% of Americans. Healthy children at virtually no risk, had their lives forever changed by school lockdowns, lasting 18 months or longer in some places, even as we knew relatively quickly, Covid was not killing children, anywhere on the globe. In the end, the cure was far worse than the disease.
As Covid failures were exposed after the fact, the US Press had little interest in what should have been the story of the century. Looking back, it is stunning many Americans complied for years with little complaint. Until one considers for the ruling and professional class, largely Dem, whose children are often reared by domestics, it was a chance to reconnect as a family. 4 wealthy people in a 6K sq ft. house on an acre with a pool , had a far different lockdown than an extended family of 6 in a tiny apartment, on a budget. The former had an extended staycation. The latter dwelled in prison.
The encore to Covid was an unprecedented and purposeful dissolution of the Southern border. For years, the arrival of millions of unvetted, unvaccinated, mostly impoverished and sparsely educated migrants was denied or ignored by virtually all Dems and the Press. Only Texas, bussing a tiny fraction of their new arrivals to Blue Cities, eventually ended the comical refusal to acknowledge the obvious.
On top of the above, came unprecedented Green regulation and spending. Suddenly the US had contraband shower heads and Americans were instructed a single 26 year old DC wonder kid, living in 700 sq. ft, would choose the EV vehicle most appropriate for a rural family of 5 with a 15 mile drive to school each way. The arrogance was staggering and, as always, unprecedented. Toss in child social engineering and the situation worsens.
We have arrived at our current situation, after an unprecedented half decade. All over the globe lousy governance, produces lousy citizen behavior. We can't fix our present, without facing our past. We need a reset not back decades, but back to 2019, before we all lost our minds.
There's much truth in the post -- a whole hell of lot of truth, in fact. Yet there are some orthogonal points that need to be made. First, remember when "progressives" wore themselves out preaching the virtues of "nuance?" Pepperridge Farm remembers, and so do I. These days -- and I have experienced it directly -- if you depart from the "progressive" orthodoxy of the moment, a/k/a the party line, you will be called a Trump fascist Nazi. It happened to me within the past week, and far from the first time.
Yes, we are mixed bags, and so are the political issues and so much more. The reining "progressives" who run the Democratic Party have rejected what they once touted as a principle and a sign of intelligence, critical thinking, and virtue. If black-and-white thinking was a sign of laziness, stupidity, and worse, I must ask: Who are the idiots now?
The above point notwithstanding, some things are pretty much purely right, and some things are pretty much purely wrong. When Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, may they roast in hell, blamed the 9/11 attacks on the gays and the feminists, they were entirely wrong. When, in the past week, a torrent of social media posts have celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk, and when Jimmy Kimmel said that the murderer was "MAGA," that crap was entirely wrong.
So I won't always split the difference. Compromise on many things, but not on everything. The Democratic Party that I once called my political home has been captured by some very arrogant, very stupid, very oblivious people who think they are better and smarter, but who have been entirely wrong and much worse on an astonishingly long list of things. They need to be told over and over and over just how obnoxious, embarrassing, idiotic, and immoral they have become.
I give high credit to Liberal Patriot for calling much-needed attention to the level of dysfunction that approaches a political suicide wish, but still: I'm not going to split the difference on everything. I don't think the voters will in '26 or '28, either, but we shall see.
I think Zach's point is that if you ask a Democrat which side is more violent (e.g.), they'll have a very similar story they've convinced themselves of about why the right is eminently worse. And that this makes sense because groups in conflict have a hard time seeing things clearly and seeing how the other side is telling themselves the same thing. Zach correctly says that you can acknowledge this while also pointing out that it doesn't mean violence or any other bad behavior is symmetrical on both sides.
My own politics have usually been between the 40 yard lines. In my four decades as a Democrat, my mantra was, "I'm a Democrat, but I'm not stupid about it." George W. Bush pushed me further leftward than usual with Abu Ghraib, Hurricane Katrina, and the Panic of 2008 caused by under-regulation of mortgage finance, and now the Democrats have pushed me further rightward than usual with their multi-faceted hatred that culminated in the truly shocking celebrations of Kirk's murder.
People have told me that I shouldn't have been surprised given what they said when Trump was shot, and they were correct in a way. So my mantra is that I am shocked, but not surprised. But definitely shocked, and very deeply so. Oddly enough, it's not really the violence, but the hatred that has led so many "progressives" to celebrate the violence, and in the process abandon every principle they've touted, and even basic human decency.
That stuff is entirely wrong. No splitting that baby for me. The line's been drawn, and I know where I stand. There's a brotherhood of the civilized in this world, and I intend to be in that brotherhood. Pity the "progressives" who have dragged themselves and what for so many years was my Democratic Party out of that brotherhood. It would be hard to overstate how sad that is.
Excellent post by my friend Zach, an essential voice in the civility "space," which sadly is filled with well-meaning but misguided people who quickly come to Jimmy Kimmel's defense while ignoring the violent death of Charlie Kirk. We need to stop trying to make this into an "other side" or "both sides" issue and realize that the most frequent denominator is mental health and how dark places on the web and in social media feed it.
Education is the transmission of knowledge and skills and the development of character traits. (with numerous sub sections I'm sure an educated person came up with) Skilled trades people are educated. Beyond average knowledge.
educated,
having an education especially : having an education beyond the average
It seems counter intuitive that education is a big divider of our country. Which educated person, car mechanic or political theory graduate, adds more value to our civilization?
The formally educated cannot exist without those who are not. Society will survive without them. Those who are not, don't need the formally educated to survive. The non formally educated have made many important discoveries and created many very useful things and ideas. Society will collapse without them. Many of our most successful high tech companies don't require a college degree anymore. Internships are the more intelligent way to go. Air Traffic controllers. Highly intelligent individuals who can work, sometimes better, under very stressful situations. As we have seen, usually without, the most recent and better and more modern equipment the rest of the world has. No formal education needed. You'll get it all from the FAA.
What's the point of all of this? Just being formally educate doesn't make you an asset to society nor someone who should consume any oxygen in these days of so much pollution. Yet they want to run the country. If one believes in science, empirical data shows what is the most successful way, or not successful ways, to build a society. The most productive educated people learn more on their own, than through formal education. Pick up a book, or book on tape, or watch a YouTube video. You'll learn more quickly without the BS you need for a formal education.
The tradesmen and women I know have professional respect for trade men or women from different trades. I found a great plumber from a relative who works on HVAC. Who does a Harvard grad have respect for from another institution of higher learning except another Harvard grad?
I have a formal education, 4 year degree in general studies (not impressive at all), and my wife has common sense. I would much rather have the common sense. (I defend my degree because I spent a lot of years in night school while preforming my duties as an air traffic controller in the USAF. And the rationale was not a degree for a specific profession, but all employers back then would just be impressed because you took the time and had the patient to get one)
The divide to me is, the most productive and biggest assets to society, the non formally educated have a lot more knowledge, skills and abilities to run this country, not the formally educated.
In other words, being formally educated should make one not qualified for public office. The ones who are our leaders should be from our ranks non formally educated, for most assuredly, the formally educated, many not all, have no clue. However, we could still hire the formally educated to advise, as long as they are kept on a short leash!
Or Israel, defense force soldiers were killed the other day in the RAFA area of Gaza as they were delivery humanitarian aid through Jordan. The IDF is now cutting out delivering aid through Jordan. This is the right action to take ?you know what the real deal is. The residence of Gaza, who are not fighting on the side of Hamas need to rise up and begin taking action to throw out their oprepressers! They must begin to work themselves on finding the hostages and getting them back to Israel. If they do not take these actions, then they are just as complicit as Hamas members and it is no big deal then for Israel to begin to kill them because they are the enemy, and it is simple as that. Israel is at war. When the United States was at war with Japan and Germany, it took every action necessary, no matter what and Israel now has the right to do the same and it should be completely back by the United States.
So, if polarization is rational, how do you reason your way out of it. You can't. Wars go on until one or both sides are exhausted and often times beyond. You are here.
I think some polarization is rational; but when you add in toxic conflict dynamics, people's views can become very irrational (more team-based, more us vs them, even to self-destructive levels). So that is what I work on: the lowering of contempt; the increasing of understanding (even as one works hard against one's opponents). We're never going to get rid of disagreement (that is not something we want to get rid of) but there is a lot of low-hanging fruit we can tackle in terms of the amount of contempt we hold for each other.
And I believe that improving *how we disagree* will inevitably improve *what we disagree about* (make the discussions/conversation more logical and less polarized). Because those two dimensions are related (see my piece on this for more on how they're related: https://defusingamericananger.substack.com/p/how-does-our-anger-at-them-create).
I have only minor disagreements with your comments about the dynamics of conflict. However, when one gets in to the roots of conflict and the issues are existential polarization is indeed rational. It would be possible to argue that the issues aren't really existential but are only made to seem like it because of the polarization. To that I would counter that when someone calls you Hitler, it is totally rational to polarize because who wouldn't want to kill Hitler. Even Hitler wanted to and did kill Hitler.
I have been spending a bit of time lately with just war theory given all the conflict going on. It seems to me that both Russia and Ukraine can make a valid claim here. This requires a third party-the real bad guys. I would argue that they can be found in DC and Brussels. It is a case of you and him should fight. It is possible to apply third party theory to domestic issues as well. In that case, the third party is clickbait.
I just think there are plenty of ways to see things very differently, and in rational ways. E.g., I'll say that Trump's personality alone, in its extreme contemptuousness and us-vs-them-ness (culminating in the very low point of denying elections), is sufficient to understand why many blame Republicans/the-right for our toxicity. I'll say that for me doing this work, it can be hard to get past that; but I have made the effort to see the complexity of this conflict and to see the unhelpfulness of playing "blame games." I just mention this to reinforce the point that for rational people, even those who very much want to reduce conflict/toxicity, it can be a very easy thing to see Republicans as contributing in big ways (going back to Newt Gingrich's scorched earth approaches to politics and such). My point, though, hopefully you see, isn't to argue who's narrative is more defensible, but just to say that it's easy to see by and large why people on both "sides" (for the most part, we're talking most of country, not outliers) have the fears/concerns they do; and often which "side" one is on isn't about enthusiastic support for your "side" but just about fears of the "other side."
Trump is a symptom, not a cause. Traditional Republicans are basically surrender monkeys. I can understand why the Left likes this but conservatives got pretty sick of it. Granted that Trump is rude, crude and uncouth but I am old enough to remember LBJ. Remember the commercial with the little girl and the daisies.
I agree; Trump is a symptom and outcome of our polarization (and it's important for anti-Trump people to see that point, if they want to help reduce polarization). But a symptom of polarization can also be a contributor to polarization; it's a self-reinforcing cycle (and conflict has many self-reinforcing aspects). But the important point to me is seeing how easy it is for both "sides" to arrive at very different views of the nature of the conflict (as people can do in any conflict).
No. The fact that Democrats are alternatively cheering for Kirk's murder, excusing it or trying to "both sides" it (as you are) immediately after, is the proof that they are to blame. They are making excuses and deflecting instead of denouncing the far left. The Democratic Party has moved radically to the left over the last two decades, as all data shows clearly. And their radicalization is not just in their issue positions, it is in their refusal to compromise, and increasing willingness to support violence (which is also documented by data).
There is a very clear date when the current climate of violence began. It was November 2014, in Ferguson, MO, after 6 years of racial polarization and escalation by Barack Obama. In 2009, Obama's first year, with Eric Holder's declaration that America was "a nation of cowards when it comes to race", and the Henry Louis Gates incident, where Obama declared police "behaved stupidly", leading to the "beer summit" when he was forced to backpedal. Then there was Trayvon Martin, who died while violently attacking a Hispanic man who shot him in self-defense, who Obama said "could have been my son". The most frequent visitor to Obama's White House over his two terms was Al Sharpton, who had been ostracized by Democrats for inciting anti-semitic violence in NYC, and for perpetrating the Tawanna Brawley hoax against the NYPD.
Obama was a messianic figure to the far left, and many soft-headed, affluent white liberals. They told themselves and everyone else from day one that anyone who didn't support him was, by definition, a racist, and there was no other explanation. That was when Democrats began to fully refuse to accept any dissent, and fully dehumanize anyone who opposed them. That's when they told themselves there was no legitimate opposition, and compromise was out of the question.
The phenomenon known as "wokeness" took root and flourished under Obama, who appointed many of its proponents (he himself being one) throughout government, and celebrated and promoted the leading proponents of it like Ibram X Kendi, Kimberly Crenshaw, and so on. No one had heard of any of this until Obama, and it exploded under his administration. It is the core of his agenda and legacy.
In December 2014, less than a month after Ferguson, a man shot two NYPD officers in retaliation for the death of Eric Garner, also publicized by Obama. By 2015, BLM was marching through NYC chanting "pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon!", calling for the murder of police. In July 2016, a man opened fire on Dallas police officers during a BLM-style protest, killing five.
While that was going on, in 2015 the Supreme Court imposed gay marriage on the country immediately after 30+ states (including California) had voted against it, mostly by direct ballot initiative, and within weeks, well-funded far left activists began a campaign to drive a Colorado baker out of business for declining to bake a cake for a gay wedding. The frenzy to punish dissent began immediately after the ruling.
All of that happened before Trump. With the escalating climate of violence and "cancel culture" under Obama, and Hillary Clinton denouncing non-Democrats as "a basket of deplorables", calling them all racists and bigots, speaking out loud the Democrats' view of anyone who did not support Obama (who himself had denounced non-Democrats as people who "bitterly cling to their guns and religion"), Trump was elected.
In Trump's first year, the left exploded into the "Me Too" movement, which, after targeting legitimate perpetrators like Harvey Weinstein (all of them left wing, mostly Hollywood and media figures), produced numerous cases of false allegations and unjust firings and persecutions, which did not end until the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial. During that time, the Washington Post published an opinion piece that called for an end to due process, based on the mantra of "believe all women", rejecting the presumption of innocence.
With gay marriage imposed, the left turned to the Trans movement as its next cause. Democrats began imposing a widespread agenda of indoctrination into the rainbow flag in public schools, including elementary school. They began to pass laws (as Gavin Newsome did in California) to take children away from their parents if the parents did not support their "transition", to hide children from their parents on that basis, for teachers to have discussions with students to encourage their transition behind their parents' backs, and to provide and pay for medical transition, hormones and sex change operations for minors, all behind the backs of their parents, and against their parents will. They also promoted things like "drag queen story time" at public libraries, and men in women's sports, locker rooms and bathrooms. In March 2016, under left wing pressure, the largest corporations in the country imposed a boycott on the state of North Carolina for passing a law restricting women's restrooms to women.
As the "woke" agenda took on more and more of the characteristics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and "cancel culture" dominated society, Democrats (including Joe Biden) used government to wantonly violate the First Amendment by demanding that social media platforms censor and ban questioning of Covid, along with things like "misgendering".
And then came George Floyd. A repeat violent criminal who died of a drug overdose was used as a dishonest pretext to spark massive, violent riots across the country for 6 months, killing at least 25 people, injuring around 2000 police officers, and countless others, along with destruction of public and private property, the tearing down of statues, looting, firebombings and arson. Almost no city in the country was immune. Democrats did not just excuse these incidents. They promoted them, celebrated them, and funded them. Black squares on Instagram were part of a campaign to raise massive amounts of money for BLM, an avowedly Marxist organization, which incited, provoked and funded the riots. Kamala Harris, while running for VP, raised funds to bail rioters out of jail. The left wing media vocally, actively and openly excused and featured spokespeople who endorsed the violence.
And now, over the last two years, the young disturbed trans people the Democrats created have become violent, repeatedly attacking and murdering small children in Christian schools, and now Charlie Kirk.
Democrats openly, and widely, cheered on the murder of a health care executive by Luigi Mangione. They began massive protests in support of Hamas immediately after October 7, 2023. And far left Ivy League administrators defended persecution and threats against Jewish students on campus. And now, in the wake of Kirk's murder, many prominent Democrats have responded by effectively saying, "he was asking for it".
There is absolutely no equivalent on the right to any of this, either in depth or scope. Trump, and all of the (almost entirely minor and fabricated) outrages he brings, are 100% in response to all of the above, and are a tiny fraction of it. I did not support Trump's refusal to accept the 2020 election results, much less the dreaded, fabled "January 6", which is the biggest example the left has for pretending it's "both sides". But for Democrats to act like that incident was anywhere near the scope and magnitude of what they had done over the preceding year, which is what sparked it in the first place, is absolutely absurd. The only person who died in that incident was a protester. The movement to "Defund the Police", carried out by radical Democrats in far left cities, has led to more deaths through exploding crime than anything that can be blamed on the right.
If there were any sane, moderate Democrats left, they would be flatly denouncing the far left and accepting responsibility for stoking this violence with their rhetoric, and they would be joining with Republicans to oppose the agenda of the far left. As it stands, it is clear that the only way it will end is for Democrats to lose elections, repeatedly, because of it. As in the 1970s, when the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Panthers and other far left terrorist groups were operating, the only chance of peace is for Republicans to win massive landslide elections as Nixon and Reagan did, holding the White House for 20 out of 24 years, until Democrats are forced, as Bill Clinton was with "Sista Souljah" to openly reject and oppose the far left, and support "law and order". As of now, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris spent the last four years calling Trump and his supporters Fascists. And now they pretend they have no responsibility, when Kirk's killer carved the word on a bullet.
And on top of all of that, pretending that "both sides" are acting in good faith ignores and denies the fact that the far left actively wants the society to collapse. They are Marxists at their core who want a violent revolution. This is their ideology, which underpins all of what is called "wokeness". As long as the Democrats coddle them, they will continue their reign of terror. When your response to acts of left wing violence is to make excuses and try to shift blame, you are supporting the continuation of it. Plain and simple.
IMO, one side's majority disregards our Creator, the other's majority acknowledges HIM. Being a believer doesn't make you immune to doing evil (far from it, unfortunately, but I'm always amused at those that use the excuse of not considering Christianity because the Bible is 'so full of evil, hate, and craziness' not understanding that how else would you deliver a guide on how you should live without examples and situations of what not to do, showing us how oh so easy it is to succumb to our flesh and the prince of this world sans Christ, yet repentance and salvation is always available).
But I do believe that a world view based in the Bible will lead to much better results than a world view which is basically 'I like being my own boss' (who doesn't, thus the mystery of the gospel to so many).
President Trump struggles (like all of us), with sin. But President Trump's courage and resolve have ushered in an environment much more accepting and honoring of Christianity and our religious roots.
Rejoice always, pray unceasingly and in everything give thanks.
A general response that might apply to a wide range of criticisms/response to this piece: When talking about these topics, I often get people responding to me who want to debate “who’s actually right” or “who’s actually more at fault” or "what group is actually worse." In my work, I make no claims about that (as I don’t think it’s productive; and it’s just not relevant to conflict resolution type work). What IS important to me is seeing how easy it is for rational, compassionate people to reach different conclusions about such matters, which I think is just very clearly the case. And I think it's important to see how reaching for team-based, us-vs-them approaches and contempt and anger (searching for definitive proof that "it's all their fault" or "see, they are worse, this proves it"), only ends up amplifying toxicity — and even ends up contributing to the very things about which we’re so angry/contemptuous.
We'll all believe what we believe about who's more at fault (that is natural and fine) -- but I think it's clear that you can continue thinking "one side is worse" (if that's what you believe) while also believing that it's extremely important to reduce toxicity and contempt and team-based thinking, because it's a self-reinforcing cycle.
I take what the "progressives" used to say is a "nuanced" approach. I am disdainful of both Trump and the feckless insults who the Dems have put on their tickets since Obama, and have cast write-in votes in reaction during the past three presidential elections.
I am quite critical of what comes out of the mouth of Archie Bunker Trump, but am even more critical of the blind hatred from the "progressives" who have seized control of the Democratic Party. No one gets anything but low marks from me, but I do think the Democrats have been worse.
I further think that the Democrats are on track to pay a steep price in the years ahead.
This is a little dishonest, because all of the assassins of the past year have supported Left Wing causes, like "Free Palestine" or trans rights:
Elias Rodriguez 2 victims "Free Palestine"
Luigi Mangione 1 victim "Socialized Medicine"
Robin Westman 2 children LGBT rights
Mohamed Sabry Soliman 1 elderly woman, 6 others injured by firebomb "Free Palestine"
Loay Alnaji 1 elderly man killed "Free Palestine"
Tyler Robinson LGBT rights
Thomas Matthew Crooks, Trump shooter Anti-Trump
The man who firebombed Josh Shapiros house was also a "Free Palestine" nutjob.
I'm sorry but the majority of political violence these past two years are coming from one side. And it's not the Right.
Another imbalance can be which group has the most power. Eg, in the case of Israel/Palestine, Israel is perceived as the one with the most power. This can lead to some defenders of the less-powerful group to embrace more aggressive approaches (and I think that is a factor in Republicans being more ok with Trump’s personality, as they perceived themselves fighting a much more culturally powerful “enemy”).
Do you think if Harris had won we’d see more examples of far right type violence? I do.
There are other factors. Eg, I do think liberal/progressive aims, because they are about pushing back against perceived society-wide outrages and injustices, can lead to some very angry worldviews — worldviews that manifest in different ways compared to conservative-associated anger. There’s also the fact that young politically active people skew more liberal (see colleges) - and younger people are more immature and more emotional and more prone to embracing extreme political/cultural thinking/approaches.
But just to say I think things are very complex and it’s easy to see what we seek to find, and there’s no sense/benefit to playing a blame game with what are an extremely small number of people.
Embracing this view also helps protect “your side” if things shift. You should be able to imagine a future where republicans lose and that kicks off all sorts of weird right-associated militant/violent things.
I think it's a better (meaning more salient) exercise to imagine a future where the Democrats have failed to retake the House in '26, lose the '28 presidential election, lose a dozen electoral votes after the '30 census and reapportionment, and wind up with an 8-1 Supreme Court and a wander in the wilderness comparable to 1869-1933.
What will the "progressives" do then? They don't realize it, but they have led the Democratic Party to abandon the old-school liberalism that kept the party together for the better part of 80 years. Democrats need to prepare themselves for a long, bitter cold political winter. How did the song go? Oh yeah, I remember now: "Don't it always seem to go / That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone."
ADDENDUM
The Democrats need a generic polling advantage of 5% to retake the House, or so the sharpshooters say. It's now at 1%-2%.
https://www.aol.com/articles/generic-ballot-tracking-poll-republicans-111728477.html
It's hard to overstate how depressing the failure to retake the House would be for the Democrats. You can count on the fingers on one hand the number of times when the president's party didn't lose at least some House seats in the mid-term elections. Given the narrow R control there now, a loss of seats would mean a change in control.
Even without redistricting in TX, CA, MO, OH and maybe IN, a 1%-2% generic lead won't cut it. If the redistricting wars go as expected, the Rs will have a net gain of 5 seats going into the mid-terms, maybe more. Fail to regain the House, and '28 will look quite grim, although presidential elections are determined by the strength of the economy between March and June of the election year. So I won't be able to place my bet until the unemployment rate is reported in July '28.
That said, I'd much rather be a Republican than a Democrat these days.
Didn't happen during the Biden years.
A general response you might like: https://open.substack.com/pub/theliberalpatriot/p/its-all-the-other-sides-fault?utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=157754683. I just think it's a mistake to do such score-counting, in a huge country where violence is very rare, and where there is plenty of ways one can form a narrative about the other side's badness and violent nature. Or, maybe a better way to put it: we will all have our views about "who is worse" (that is natural), but if one is using that as an excuse/reason to not want to reduce toxicity and contempt, then one is making a big mistake.
It's even more dishonest to limit your analysis to a single year. Expand the analytical window to a more broad-based three-decade baseline and you can clearly see that political violence is bipartisan. Just a small sampling of recent violence performed by those on the right-side of the spectrum
-2025 Minnesota Democratic legislators shooting (anti-leftism)
-2023 Allen, Texas mall shooting (white supremacist, Neo-Nazi)
-2023 Jacksonville Dollar General shooting (white supremacist, Neo-Nazi)
-2022 Paul Pelosi attack
-2022 Buffalo supermarket shooting ('Great Replacement' theorists)
-2021 Attack on the U.S. Capitol (conspiracy theories, fanned by the leader of the right, about the left stealing an election)
-2020 attempted kidnapping of Gretchen Whitmer
-2019 El Paso Walmart shooting (perpetrator claimed he was defending against a 'Hispanic invasion' of Texas)
-2019 Poway synagogue shooting (white supremacism)
-2018 Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue shootings (perpetrators acting according to conspiracy theories about Jews supporting illegal immigration)
-2017 Charlottesville 'Unite the Right' rally killing
-2016 Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation (right-wing 'anti-government' motivations)
-2015 Colorado Planned Parenthood shooting (abortion)
-2015 Charleston church shooting (white supremacism)
-2014 Bundy ranch standoff (right-wing anti-government motivations)
-2012 Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting (literally cited 'the left' as motivation)
-2009 murder of George Tiller (abortion)
-2008 Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church shooting (again literally citing 'the left')
...after that we can get into the Oklahoma City bombing in '95 and the many attacks on abortion clinics of the 90s.
Taken as a whole, the common element is *not* right/left--it is illiberalism, usually mixed with mental derangement. If we want to talk about violence since 2000, you can see most of them were motivated by conspiracy theories that the perpetrators were sucked into by social media. The attention economy and the dominance of algorithmically-manipulated media platforms is the biggest culprit here, as it is literally designed to agitate the paranoid and angry instincts that feed political extremism. Just look at the aftermath of the Kirk shooting--the most angry, despicable, attention-getting responses to it have been augmented on social media at the expense of moderate, measured, rational responses that, according to statistics, characterize most people's views, whether on the left or the right. And in the political arena somehow the sociopathic extremists on Twitter are being framed as representative of everyone who isn't on the right. (same happened when the Minnesota legislators were shot, only with the political affiliation flipped) The entire body politic has fallen into the social media rabbit-hole. It's the biggest political issue of our time, and it is going practically unaddressed by our political leaders--and, as in the case of our president's shameful response, being actively made worse by some.
Your selective memory here pretty well supports the article.
I'm a little curious why "free Palestine" is labeled by you as a "left wing" cause. Is it truly?
Also curious why you don't include killings by righties and attempted killings or January 6 (which was a violent and direct attack on our Democracy).
"Free Palestine" is seen as a leftist cause because it is based on their oppressor/oppressed worldview. Palestinian Moslems are by definition oppressed because they are considered non-white, and their oppressors are by definition Israel, who is considered to be white in this context. Of course, white people are always and everywhere the oppressors. There is no consideration for who the Palestinians and the Israelis actually are, it's just a slogan like so many others the Left uses based on theoretical academic concepts they try to apply to far messier reality. They completely ignore the fact that Israel is a fairly liberal democracy that gives civil rights to all citizens, including gays and other "nonconforming" people, as well as Palestinians who have renounced violence. And that Palestinians, as Moslems, hate and kill gays. The Left's love for Islam is something I have never understood.
I think you make points that are worth considering....and I will.
Thanks.
Someone has already posted many equally dangerous events by people on the right, which says something about your selective use of data, but I want to call your attention to another matter. That matter is whether you should examine the sources of your data.
For example, you indicate that "The man who firebombed Josh Shapiros house was also a "Free Palestine" nutjob."
Here is the Wikipedia entry on him:
During his arrest, Balmer was transported to a local hospital for treatment after suffering a medical episode.[11] Following Balmer's arrest, his mother Christie Balmer told CBS News that her son has schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and stated that he "went off his medication".[8][7] Balmer struggled with mental illness throughout his life and was hospitalized twice.[2]"
Balmer was described by his brother as a political independent until 2024, when he tried to convince his family members to vote for Donald Trump.[12"
He was a Trump supporter, not a leftist. Please re-examine all of your assertions for completeness and accuracy.
I'm not sure that we should consider the apparent politics of a known mentally-ill person as valid support for classifying left-right violence.
but the author of the comment did. His mental illness was clearly, in my mind, the actual cause of his violence, not his political views.
But, actually, shouldn't your comment here be directed to the writer of the comment I was responding to?
You lost me at Wikipedia. Their leftist slant on contemporary events is well known.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist so it is not "well known" to me that wiki is slanted.
https://apnews.com/article/pennsylvania-governor-mansion-fire-motive-cody-balmer-734827f6c29d7b3064af442e729d10d7?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=share
The editors and then the CEO took a sharp turn left a few years ago. Makes no difference on most things, but it's misdirecting on others. I still use wiki all the time but am aware that if the topic is in any way political the information might not be correct.
If I want a list of states by land area, fine. If it's anything political, nope.
Thanks! Another poster referred me to an article that did a great study of wiki and found political bias. I can't tell from the article how strong it is, but I'll be more conscious of that now.
I can't even remember the last time I used wiki to search for a political topic, so I am like you!
https://manhattan.institute/article/is-wikipedia-politically-biased
A quick Google search will provide additional examples. I used to donate routinely to Wikipedia when I started noticing a distinct leftist slant in many current events entries. I stopped donating and use them for non-controversial items like “what is Jethro Tull’s discography?”
And I’m an engineer. Not a conspiracy theorist.
I tend to think that distrusting media/sources is not a bad thing; clearly there is a lot of bias everywhere we look. I think the main bad thing (team-based, polarizing thing) people do is hugely distrusting one set of sources reflexively, but then trusting other sets of sources that align with their existing views. E.g., a friend of mine who told me "I don't watch any mainstream media; they lie" and when I asked him where he gets his news, he told me "friends' posts on Facebook." That is an extreme example but I think many of us put up huge walls against some sources and no/minimal walls against other sources on "our side."
And nice thing I'd say about Wikipedia; even if you perceive some articles as biased (I definitely do); they have the footnotes and references for things, so you can go research it yourself. That is huge. This is why I think they provide a great service; why I donate money to them regularly.
Fascinating study. Thanks. Pretty compelling.
(I do believe that distrusting everything in WIKI is a little on the conspiracy side)
Perhaps you can help me with this part. My question is how strong are the effects? In other words, what do the numbers ranging from 1- to 1 mean in practical terms? How many negative words are there in a wiki article about, say, Clinton that are positive versus negative.
In other words, what is the range or confidence interval average in these articles. One can, with enough data, find differences that are not too meaningful.
It looks like they would be meaningful from the data presented, but I wouid like like to know the "practical" difference.
Unfortunately I am not familiar with the specific statistical tests that the authors used, so I can’t have an informed answer on the relative significance of the numbers in Figure 7 for example. Doing a quick Google search on Cohen’s d gives a general guidelines that 0.2 is a small effect, 0.5 is a moderate effect and 0.8 is a large effect. (National University Academic Success Center statistics resources “Cohen’s d”). Now I know just enough to be dangerous.
More useful I’ve found is to look at trends. Nearly all the figures show a clear trend towards positive language for the “blue” and negative language for the “red”. It’s pretty consistent throughout. Now is any individual case significant in and of itself? Hard to say. But a trend where nearly all are heading the same way is troubling to me.
I haven’t stopped using Wikipedia entirely. I still use them for noncontroversial topics that I can cross check using other sources if something looks “off”. But Wikipedia can be very convenient, so the baby remains in the bath water.
I theoretically agree with your premise that both sides have to work hard to try and understand each other. I try to live this every day. But you completely failed in your arguments to support that we are where we are at because of an equal impact from both sides. The cultural pressure points from the left were way stronger on the average persons(voter) day to day life than the powers of government on the right over the past 15 years. The impact on a normal persons(voter) day to day life from social media to school to family interactions have all been tilted strongly to support the left over the past 15 years plus. They only began to crack with the Twitter sale and then with Trumps election over the past 8 months. All you have to look at to fully believe this is what happened during COVID. The left was strong enough to shut down this country way past the time that science could justify it and they impacted the schools such that we will have a generation of young people impacted negatively. When anyone questioned this they were told they were wanting to kill the grandmothers and grandfathers. COVID. Is just one example. There are many others from how DEI impacted people in their jobs to the violence that was tolerated in support of Black Lives Matter. Trump’s election was much more a reaction to what people are experiencing not an instigator. Until people see this we will be in trouble And finally I would attest it is way harder to find a person who has been shunned from their family because they were liberal then it is to find a person shunned from family and friend because they were conservative
There's a whole lot that's wrong here, but the claim that social media's impact has been 'tilted to the right' is completely wrong. Social media has been tilted towards political extremism, without any pattern of political affiliation. It has radicalized people on the left and the right and if you look behind any politically-motivated violent incident in the country in the past 20 years, you almost always find its influence.
Indeed, here's what people have to get their head around: the nexus of extremism here is not political, it is technological. The way social media has been designed, and the ruinous business model behind it (selling people's data to advertising consultancies for revenue) has made society as a whole more cranky and paranoid by elevating extreme, conflict-driven, attention-getting political behavior over cooperative, moderate behavior. You need merely ask yourself: what will get the most retweets? A moderate statement condemning Charlie Kirk's murder and calling for political reconciliation or an immoderate statement dancing on his grave, and/or blaming it on a faceless 'opposition' of pedophiliac Deep State saboteurs? Anyone whose spenty any time on Twitter knows the answer is the latter.
Multiply that dynamic to a global scale, and voila--extremism rises at the expense of moderation across the political spectrum.
I think things are very complex. For one, I think both “sides” have played a role in making the other more extreme and angry. I think liberal/anti-trump people can and do tell a story much like yours, which is quite compelling, about how Republicans became increasingly aggressive and unreasonable over the past few decades, culminating in support for Trump’s contemptuous approaches. Just to say, i think it’s easy to weave stories.
You might like this piece about how Republicans and Democrats have made each other more extreme. I think it’s important to see that none of this stuff happens in isolation. The fears/anger of one “side” help form the fears/anger of the other side. https://open.substack.com/pub/defusingamericananger/p/republicans-and-democrats-play-a?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I read it. I can agree tribalism begets tribalism. That is why I try very hard not to fall into that and constantly try and see the others points. One issue I have found it is hard to get past is if there is not a common moral compass. As I look at what has happened over the past 50-60 years is that we in the us may be splitting apart on this. Not the majority but very very vocal minority having a very different moral compass.
Worse. There is not a common reality.
100% - thanks for this great post! At lunch with a beloved progressive colleague the other day, her comment re: KIrk was "live by sword, die by the sword." When I asked her what sword Kirk had used to mow down his adversaries, she stared at me like she didn't know what I was talking about. When I told her that Robinson's partner was a trans woman, her immediate response was "OMG, now the trans community has a target on its back!" As correct as she is to fear retaliation against some innocent trans person at some later point, it was notable that she jumped right from one defenseless-victim position (targeted by Kirk) to the next (targeted by Kirk supporters). She did not pause a minute to OWN the grievous escalation in this national hate-fest with the killing of Kirk by a member of the trans community (which I'll call Robinson, since he loves a trans person). Of course the entire trans community cannot be tarred with Robinson's brush, but just as surely this is exactly the kind of behavior that the MAGA right will light upon to pursue its own agenda of aggrievement and backlash. There is plenty of blame to go around, and per the excellent comments of Minsky below, social media has a lot to do with it.
The problem with "plenty of blame to go around" is that, when that bromide gets thrown around, in the real world it becomes a deflection. The Democrats and the media will try to dig up the "nuance" that they did their best to kill, but I don't think that dog will hunt. Here's how I think it's going to go: The pendulum is now swinging the other way after having swing very far left on a wide range of cultural and political issues, Trump's two victories notwithstanding.
It's going to keep swinging, and after a while the right wing will be just as stupid, just as arrogant, just as embarrassing, and just as immoral as the left wing has been. I am not going to like it as it happens, but it's going to happen. It will happen because the "progressive" nomenklatura has been self-insulating, but not totally. America corrects itself, then over-corrects. In the meantime, I will engage in a good deal of schadenfreude, and later regret it. Hey, I'm only human. LOL
This “dominated the culture for at least the past decade, they control few levers of political power at this moment” understates the progressive dominance - far leftism (think pronouns in bio) still controls: most of the charitable non profit sector, the mainstream media (they just had a hiccup with Kimmel), every public education institution from Head Start to graduate schools, most elite private schools that aren’t evangelical, the arts and culture, 90% of corporate HR departments. The NFL and NBA are still doing the BLM schtik. While “deep state” is an overstatement, the entire infrastructure of government is dominated by leftist views and structures, especially in states with public employee unions (hence Covid school lockdowns lasting a year). And politically they control every major and medium sized city in the country, which is where people actually live. Portland is still a lefty soft totalitarian environment. Nothing’s changed here but the national news. Try saying “men can’t become women” or “all lives matter” or “equality not equity” out here. Career ends, house may be vandalized, doxxed on the internet.
You’ve mistaken the loss of some percentage of power (25%?) and the perception of greater federal importance for the total loss of all power. If Trump wasn’t such a media peacock preening and tweeting all the time, it wouldn’t feel like it does. Progressives still run just about everything - just not as much and just not as blatantly in some respects. They actually get told “no” here and there.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying. That part of the article was not meant to deny that liberals/progressives hold immense sway; that is a key point in my books, seeing that power differential (and a key point in trying to get liberals/anti-Trump people to see the importance of their working on depolarization). So it wasn't meant to say "the power is equal"; just that "the power is different; and that perceptions can swing based on who's currently in power in White House". But admittedly could have been worded better.
We really appreciate this article. It's in the liberal tradition of being willing to view all facts equally instead of through the lens of one's ideologies.
One insightful statement regarding our current situation, and why we will have so much difficulty getting beyond the us-vs-them mentality, was made by Thich Nhat Hanh, the great Vietnamese Buddhist monk :
"our greatest attachment tends to be to our opinions. We clutch on them as if they were jewels. It’s almost as if you had a right to kill somebody in self-defense if they contradict you"
This is why peoples' political opinions can result in family estrangement. Our opinions are more powerful to us than even members of our family are.
Alexis de Tocqueville argued that social pressure to conform with dominant opinion exceeded the power of even absolute monarchs.
56% of liberals think violence is fine against the other side.
3% of conservatives do.
This is not really a thing. When you add in the number of people murdered because of Democrat weak on crime/criminal encouragement programs (led by utterly crazy judges), the Hamas Murder Pirate contingent, and the trans movement? Nope. This is not a "both sides do it" at all. This is one side is dangerously close to becoming a party of terrorism. When that happens, the party should be banned like the Nazis in Germany.
Where did you get that stat? I'd direct you to research on that from people like Sean Westwood: https://behavior-podcast.com/no-there-isnt-high-support-for-political-violence-in-america-sean-westwood/. There is just a lot of bad information about support for violence out there; some of that is from bad surveys; some of that is from biased interpretations of surveys (bad or good). We will often filter for the things that support our framing. The truth is that a very small % on both "sides" support political violence. You should question if your willingness to embrace surveys that show otherwise is similar to liberal-side embracing of very pessimistic surveys/studies about conservatives/Republicans.
I am definitely struggling with this at the moment, I am center right, so I do not agree at all with the far left extremists. In fact, they do scare me. But I think that they are small in number, and I think the same of the far right extremists
The Charlie Kirk assassination and reactions to it had me questioning my thoughts. Maybe there are more of these extremists than I thought? I do not go on any other social media other than this Substack. I imagine if one does, you could go down that rabbit hole. So I’ve regained my center - any person who would do this is mentally unwell. I think the dehumanizing rhetoric thrown around by both sides can influence a mentally unbalanced person to commit a violent act.
The Liberal Patriot gives me hope … people here are balanced and I do believe we have more in common than we think … but we have to start with assuming the best in people vs the worst
It is impossible to understand our current situation, without contemplating the unprecedented 5 years that preceded it. We are a Republic by design. The US federal government is suppose to be remote and contemplative, as it moves at a glacial pace. There is a reason most Americans do not know their Congressional representatives by name. Historically, their actions, and those of the rest of DC, have rarely greatly affected American life, except in times of war.
That ended with Tump and Biden's Covid response. The pace and scope of change, is without precedent in US history. And for the first time since our founding, the US lacked a Press willing to challenge an out of control government.
With Covid, Americans were told a 3 week, never before seen loss of liberty, would counteract a disease, that would otherwise claim tens of millions of lives. It was one of the greatest fallacies in all of US history. When all was said and done, some restrictions lasted nearly 3 years, not 3 weeks, for a disease that was survived by 99.6% of Americans. Healthy children at virtually no risk, had their lives forever changed by school lockdowns, lasting 18 months or longer in some places, even as we knew relatively quickly, Covid was not killing children, anywhere on the globe. In the end, the cure was far worse than the disease.
As Covid failures were exposed after the fact, the US Press had little interest in what should have been the story of the century. Looking back, it is stunning many Americans complied for years with little complaint. Until one considers for the ruling and professional class, largely Dem, whose children are often reared by domestics, it was a chance to reconnect as a family. 4 wealthy people in a 6K sq ft. house on an acre with a pool , had a far different lockdown than an extended family of 6 in a tiny apartment, on a budget. The former had an extended staycation. The latter dwelled in prison.
The encore to Covid was an unprecedented and purposeful dissolution of the Southern border. For years, the arrival of millions of unvetted, unvaccinated, mostly impoverished and sparsely educated migrants was denied or ignored by virtually all Dems and the Press. Only Texas, bussing a tiny fraction of their new arrivals to Blue Cities, eventually ended the comical refusal to acknowledge the obvious.
On top of the above, came unprecedented Green regulation and spending. Suddenly the US had contraband shower heads and Americans were instructed a single 26 year old DC wonder kid, living in 700 sq. ft, would choose the EV vehicle most appropriate for a rural family of 5 with a 15 mile drive to school each way. The arrogance was staggering and, as always, unprecedented. Toss in child social engineering and the situation worsens.
We have arrived at our current situation, after an unprecedented half decade. All over the globe lousy governance, produces lousy citizen behavior. We can't fix our present, without facing our past. We need a reset not back decades, but back to 2019, before we all lost our minds.
There's much truth in the post -- a whole hell of lot of truth, in fact. Yet there are some orthogonal points that need to be made. First, remember when "progressives" wore themselves out preaching the virtues of "nuance?" Pepperridge Farm remembers, and so do I. These days -- and I have experienced it directly -- if you depart from the "progressive" orthodoxy of the moment, a/k/a the party line, you will be called a Trump fascist Nazi. It happened to me within the past week, and far from the first time.
Yes, we are mixed bags, and so are the political issues and so much more. The reining "progressives" who run the Democratic Party have rejected what they once touted as a principle and a sign of intelligence, critical thinking, and virtue. If black-and-white thinking was a sign of laziness, stupidity, and worse, I must ask: Who are the idiots now?
The above point notwithstanding, some things are pretty much purely right, and some things are pretty much purely wrong. When Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, may they roast in hell, blamed the 9/11 attacks on the gays and the feminists, they were entirely wrong. When, in the past week, a torrent of social media posts have celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk, and when Jimmy Kimmel said that the murderer was "MAGA," that crap was entirely wrong.
So I won't always split the difference. Compromise on many things, but not on everything. The Democratic Party that I once called my political home has been captured by some very arrogant, very stupid, very oblivious people who think they are better and smarter, but who have been entirely wrong and much worse on an astonishingly long list of things. They need to be told over and over and over just how obnoxious, embarrassing, idiotic, and immoral they have become.
I give high credit to Liberal Patriot for calling much-needed attention to the level of dysfunction that approaches a political suicide wish, but still: I'm not going to split the difference on everything. I don't think the voters will in '26 or '28, either, but we shall see.
I think Zach's point is that if you ask a Democrat which side is more violent (e.g.), they'll have a very similar story they've convinced themselves of about why the right is eminently worse. And that this makes sense because groups in conflict have a hard time seeing things clearly and seeing how the other side is telling themselves the same thing. Zach correctly says that you can acknowledge this while also pointing out that it doesn't mean violence or any other bad behavior is symmetrical on both sides.
My own politics have usually been between the 40 yard lines. In my four decades as a Democrat, my mantra was, "I'm a Democrat, but I'm not stupid about it." George W. Bush pushed me further leftward than usual with Abu Ghraib, Hurricane Katrina, and the Panic of 2008 caused by under-regulation of mortgage finance, and now the Democrats have pushed me further rightward than usual with their multi-faceted hatred that culminated in the truly shocking celebrations of Kirk's murder.
People have told me that I shouldn't have been surprised given what they said when Trump was shot, and they were correct in a way. So my mantra is that I am shocked, but not surprised. But definitely shocked, and very deeply so. Oddly enough, it's not really the violence, but the hatred that has led so many "progressives" to celebrate the violence, and in the process abandon every principle they've touted, and even basic human decency.
That stuff is entirely wrong. No splitting that baby for me. The line's been drawn, and I know where I stand. There's a brotherhood of the civilized in this world, and I intend to be in that brotherhood. Pity the "progressives" who have dragged themselves and what for so many years was my Democratic Party out of that brotherhood. It would be hard to overstate how sad that is.
Excellent post by my friend Zach, an essential voice in the civility "space," which sadly is filled with well-meaning but misguided people who quickly come to Jimmy Kimmel's defense while ignoring the violent death of Charlie Kirk. We need to stop trying to make this into an "other side" or "both sides" issue and realize that the most frequent denominator is mental health and how dark places on the web and in social media feed it.
Education is the transmission of knowledge and skills and the development of character traits. (with numerous sub sections I'm sure an educated person came up with) Skilled trades people are educated. Beyond average knowledge.
educated,
having an education especially : having an education beyond the average
It seems counter intuitive that education is a big divider of our country. Which educated person, car mechanic or political theory graduate, adds more value to our civilization?
The formally educated cannot exist without those who are not. Society will survive without them. Those who are not, don't need the formally educated to survive. The non formally educated have made many important discoveries and created many very useful things and ideas. Society will collapse without them. Many of our most successful high tech companies don't require a college degree anymore. Internships are the more intelligent way to go. Air Traffic controllers. Highly intelligent individuals who can work, sometimes better, under very stressful situations. As we have seen, usually without, the most recent and better and more modern equipment the rest of the world has. No formal education needed. You'll get it all from the FAA.
What's the point of all of this? Just being formally educate doesn't make you an asset to society nor someone who should consume any oxygen in these days of so much pollution. Yet they want to run the country. If one believes in science, empirical data shows what is the most successful way, or not successful ways, to build a society. The most productive educated people learn more on their own, than through formal education. Pick up a book, or book on tape, or watch a YouTube video. You'll learn more quickly without the BS you need for a formal education.
The tradesmen and women I know have professional respect for trade men or women from different trades. I found a great plumber from a relative who works on HVAC. Who does a Harvard grad have respect for from another institution of higher learning except another Harvard grad?
I have a formal education, 4 year degree in general studies (not impressive at all), and my wife has common sense. I would much rather have the common sense. (I defend my degree because I spent a lot of years in night school while preforming my duties as an air traffic controller in the USAF. And the rationale was not a degree for a specific profession, but all employers back then would just be impressed because you took the time and had the patient to get one)
The divide to me is, the most productive and biggest assets to society, the non formally educated have a lot more knowledge, skills and abilities to run this country, not the formally educated.
In other words, being formally educated should make one not qualified for public office. The ones who are our leaders should be from our ranks non formally educated, for most assuredly, the formally educated, many not all, have no clue. However, we could still hire the formally educated to advise, as long as they are kept on a short leash!
Or Israel, defense force soldiers were killed the other day in the RAFA area of Gaza as they were delivery humanitarian aid through Jordan. The IDF is now cutting out delivering aid through Jordan. This is the right action to take ?you know what the real deal is. The residence of Gaza, who are not fighting on the side of Hamas need to rise up and begin taking action to throw out their oprepressers! They must begin to work themselves on finding the hostages and getting them back to Israel. If they do not take these actions, then they are just as complicit as Hamas members and it is no big deal then for Israel to begin to kill them because they are the enemy, and it is simple as that. Israel is at war. When the United States was at war with Japan and Germany, it took every action necessary, no matter what and Israel now has the right to do the same and it should be completely back by the United States.
So, if polarization is rational, how do you reason your way out of it. You can't. Wars go on until one or both sides are exhausted and often times beyond. You are here.
I think some polarization is rational; but when you add in toxic conflict dynamics, people's views can become very irrational (more team-based, more us vs them, even to self-destructive levels). So that is what I work on: the lowering of contempt; the increasing of understanding (even as one works hard against one's opponents). We're never going to get rid of disagreement (that is not something we want to get rid of) but there is a lot of low-hanging fruit we can tackle in terms of the amount of contempt we hold for each other.
And I believe that improving *how we disagree* will inevitably improve *what we disagree about* (make the discussions/conversation more logical and less polarized). Because those two dimensions are related (see my piece on this for more on how they're related: https://defusingamericananger.substack.com/p/how-does-our-anger-at-them-create).
And I think your warlike framing is the wrong way to look at things. See https://defusingamericananger.substack.com/p/warlike-one-side-will-win-framings if you'd like to read more on my take on that. I don't believe we're "in a war," only that many people believe that that is the case.
I have only minor disagreements with your comments about the dynamics of conflict. However, when one gets in to the roots of conflict and the issues are existential polarization is indeed rational. It would be possible to argue that the issues aren't really existential but are only made to seem like it because of the polarization. To that I would counter that when someone calls you Hitler, it is totally rational to polarize because who wouldn't want to kill Hitler. Even Hitler wanted to and did kill Hitler.
I have been spending a bit of time lately with just war theory given all the conflict going on. It seems to me that both Russia and Ukraine can make a valid claim here. This requires a third party-the real bad guys. I would argue that they can be found in DC and Brussels. It is a case of you and him should fight. It is possible to apply third party theory to domestic issues as well. In that case, the third party is clickbait.
I just think there are plenty of ways to see things very differently, and in rational ways. E.g., I'll say that Trump's personality alone, in its extreme contemptuousness and us-vs-them-ness (culminating in the very low point of denying elections), is sufficient to understand why many blame Republicans/the-right for our toxicity. I'll say that for me doing this work, it can be hard to get past that; but I have made the effort to see the complexity of this conflict and to see the unhelpfulness of playing "blame games." I just mention this to reinforce the point that for rational people, even those who very much want to reduce conflict/toxicity, it can be a very easy thing to see Republicans as contributing in big ways (going back to Newt Gingrich's scorched earth approaches to politics and such). My point, though, hopefully you see, isn't to argue who's narrative is more defensible, but just to say that it's easy to see by and large why people on both "sides" (for the most part, we're talking most of country, not outliers) have the fears/concerns they do; and often which "side" one is on isn't about enthusiastic support for your "side" but just about fears of the "other side."
Trump is a symptom, not a cause. Traditional Republicans are basically surrender monkeys. I can understand why the Left likes this but conservatives got pretty sick of it. Granted that Trump is rude, crude and uncouth but I am old enough to remember LBJ. Remember the commercial with the little girl and the daisies.
https://youtu.be/riDypP1KfOU.
I agree; Trump is a symptom and outcome of our polarization (and it's important for anti-Trump people to see that point, if they want to help reduce polarization). But a symptom of polarization can also be a contributor to polarization; it's a self-reinforcing cycle (and conflict has many self-reinforcing aspects). But the important point to me is seeing how easy it is for both "sides" to arrive at very different views of the nature of the conflict (as people can do in any conflict).
No. The fact that Democrats are alternatively cheering for Kirk's murder, excusing it or trying to "both sides" it (as you are) immediately after, is the proof that they are to blame. They are making excuses and deflecting instead of denouncing the far left. The Democratic Party has moved radically to the left over the last two decades, as all data shows clearly. And their radicalization is not just in their issue positions, it is in their refusal to compromise, and increasing willingness to support violence (which is also documented by data).
There is a very clear date when the current climate of violence began. It was November 2014, in Ferguson, MO, after 6 years of racial polarization and escalation by Barack Obama. In 2009, Obama's first year, with Eric Holder's declaration that America was "a nation of cowards when it comes to race", and the Henry Louis Gates incident, where Obama declared police "behaved stupidly", leading to the "beer summit" when he was forced to backpedal. Then there was Trayvon Martin, who died while violently attacking a Hispanic man who shot him in self-defense, who Obama said "could have been my son". The most frequent visitor to Obama's White House over his two terms was Al Sharpton, who had been ostracized by Democrats for inciting anti-semitic violence in NYC, and for perpetrating the Tawanna Brawley hoax against the NYPD.
Obama was a messianic figure to the far left, and many soft-headed, affluent white liberals. They told themselves and everyone else from day one that anyone who didn't support him was, by definition, a racist, and there was no other explanation. That was when Democrats began to fully refuse to accept any dissent, and fully dehumanize anyone who opposed them. That's when they told themselves there was no legitimate opposition, and compromise was out of the question.
The phenomenon known as "wokeness" took root and flourished under Obama, who appointed many of its proponents (he himself being one) throughout government, and celebrated and promoted the leading proponents of it like Ibram X Kendi, Kimberly Crenshaw, and so on. No one had heard of any of this until Obama, and it exploded under his administration. It is the core of his agenda and legacy.
In December 2014, less than a month after Ferguson, a man shot two NYPD officers in retaliation for the death of Eric Garner, also publicized by Obama. By 2015, BLM was marching through NYC chanting "pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon!", calling for the murder of police. In July 2016, a man opened fire on Dallas police officers during a BLM-style protest, killing five.
While that was going on, in 2015 the Supreme Court imposed gay marriage on the country immediately after 30+ states (including California) had voted against it, mostly by direct ballot initiative, and within weeks, well-funded far left activists began a campaign to drive a Colorado baker out of business for declining to bake a cake for a gay wedding. The frenzy to punish dissent began immediately after the ruling.
All of that happened before Trump. With the escalating climate of violence and "cancel culture" under Obama, and Hillary Clinton denouncing non-Democrats as "a basket of deplorables", calling them all racists and bigots, speaking out loud the Democrats' view of anyone who did not support Obama (who himself had denounced non-Democrats as people who "bitterly cling to their guns and religion"), Trump was elected.
In Trump's first year, the left exploded into the "Me Too" movement, which, after targeting legitimate perpetrators like Harvey Weinstein (all of them left wing, mostly Hollywood and media figures), produced numerous cases of false allegations and unjust firings and persecutions, which did not end until the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial. During that time, the Washington Post published an opinion piece that called for an end to due process, based on the mantra of "believe all women", rejecting the presumption of innocence.
With gay marriage imposed, the left turned to the Trans movement as its next cause. Democrats began imposing a widespread agenda of indoctrination into the rainbow flag in public schools, including elementary school. They began to pass laws (as Gavin Newsome did in California) to take children away from their parents if the parents did not support their "transition", to hide children from their parents on that basis, for teachers to have discussions with students to encourage their transition behind their parents' backs, and to provide and pay for medical transition, hormones and sex change operations for minors, all behind the backs of their parents, and against their parents will. They also promoted things like "drag queen story time" at public libraries, and men in women's sports, locker rooms and bathrooms. In March 2016, under left wing pressure, the largest corporations in the country imposed a boycott on the state of North Carolina for passing a law restricting women's restrooms to women.
As the "woke" agenda took on more and more of the characteristics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and "cancel culture" dominated society, Democrats (including Joe Biden) used government to wantonly violate the First Amendment by demanding that social media platforms censor and ban questioning of Covid, along with things like "misgendering".
And then came George Floyd. A repeat violent criminal who died of a drug overdose was used as a dishonest pretext to spark massive, violent riots across the country for 6 months, killing at least 25 people, injuring around 2000 police officers, and countless others, along with destruction of public and private property, the tearing down of statues, looting, firebombings and arson. Almost no city in the country was immune. Democrats did not just excuse these incidents. They promoted them, celebrated them, and funded them. Black squares on Instagram were part of a campaign to raise massive amounts of money for BLM, an avowedly Marxist organization, which incited, provoked and funded the riots. Kamala Harris, while running for VP, raised funds to bail rioters out of jail. The left wing media vocally, actively and openly excused and featured spokespeople who endorsed the violence.
And now, over the last two years, the young disturbed trans people the Democrats created have become violent, repeatedly attacking and murdering small children in Christian schools, and now Charlie Kirk.
Democrats openly, and widely, cheered on the murder of a health care executive by Luigi Mangione. They began massive protests in support of Hamas immediately after October 7, 2023. And far left Ivy League administrators defended persecution and threats against Jewish students on campus. And now, in the wake of Kirk's murder, many prominent Democrats have responded by effectively saying, "he was asking for it".
There is absolutely no equivalent on the right to any of this, either in depth or scope. Trump, and all of the (almost entirely minor and fabricated) outrages he brings, are 100% in response to all of the above, and are a tiny fraction of it. I did not support Trump's refusal to accept the 2020 election results, much less the dreaded, fabled "January 6", which is the biggest example the left has for pretending it's "both sides". But for Democrats to act like that incident was anywhere near the scope and magnitude of what they had done over the preceding year, which is what sparked it in the first place, is absolutely absurd. The only person who died in that incident was a protester. The movement to "Defund the Police", carried out by radical Democrats in far left cities, has led to more deaths through exploding crime than anything that can be blamed on the right.
If there were any sane, moderate Democrats left, they would be flatly denouncing the far left and accepting responsibility for stoking this violence with their rhetoric, and they would be joining with Republicans to oppose the agenda of the far left. As it stands, it is clear that the only way it will end is for Democrats to lose elections, repeatedly, because of it. As in the 1970s, when the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Panthers and other far left terrorist groups were operating, the only chance of peace is for Republicans to win massive landslide elections as Nixon and Reagan did, holding the White House for 20 out of 24 years, until Democrats are forced, as Bill Clinton was with "Sista Souljah" to openly reject and oppose the far left, and support "law and order". As of now, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris spent the last four years calling Trump and his supporters Fascists. And now they pretend they have no responsibility, when Kirk's killer carved the word on a bullet.
And on top of all of that, pretending that "both sides" are acting in good faith ignores and denies the fact that the far left actively wants the society to collapse. They are Marxists at their core who want a violent revolution. This is their ideology, which underpins all of what is called "wokeness". As long as the Democrats coddle them, they will continue their reign of terror. When your response to acts of left wing violence is to make excuses and try to shift blame, you are supporting the continuation of it. Plain and simple.
IMO, one side's majority disregards our Creator, the other's majority acknowledges HIM. Being a believer doesn't make you immune to doing evil (far from it, unfortunately, but I'm always amused at those that use the excuse of not considering Christianity because the Bible is 'so full of evil, hate, and craziness' not understanding that how else would you deliver a guide on how you should live without examples and situations of what not to do, showing us how oh so easy it is to succumb to our flesh and the prince of this world sans Christ, yet repentance and salvation is always available).
But I do believe that a world view based in the Bible will lead to much better results than a world view which is basically 'I like being my own boss' (who doesn't, thus the mystery of the gospel to so many).
President Trump struggles (like all of us), with sin. But President Trump's courage and resolve have ushered in an environment much more accepting and honoring of Christianity and our religious roots.
Rejoice always, pray unceasingly and in everything give thanks.