Stepping Back From the Precipice

These are dark times for the United States of America. Political violence has been normalized. There are more guns than people in this country. And the most consequential and divisive election of our lifetime is less than four months away.

Whoever the shooter was, whatever their motive may have been, once again, American democracy is the loser.

I’m not writing to engage in a serious theological debate with those who’ve committed themselves to dreams and visions of dark conspiracies. I’m writing as a warning and as a call for action. Here’s the warning: While I hope and pray that protests remain peaceful and that seditious statements are confined to social media, we’d be fools to presume t

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The result is very harmful. It’s bad enough that some cable news stations and social media sites deliver only one side of the argument on many issues. But increasingly, they provide “alternative facts” that allow Americans to inhabit different realities. This leads to further polarization and to hostility toward those with whom one disagrees. It do... See more

But police violence, and Trump’s daily assaults on the presidential competence standard, are only part of the disaster. On the other side of the political aisle, among self-described liberals, we’re watching an intellectual revolution. It feels liberating to say after years of tiptoeing around the fact, but the American left has lost its mind. It’s... See more

Nobody seems to have language to say: We abhor, reject, repudiate, and punish all political violence, even as we maintain that Trump remains himself a promoter of such violence, a subverter of American institutions, and the very opposite of everything decent and patriotic in American life.

One human question, in particular, haunts me: What effect will Twitter’s decision to ban Trump have on the mimetic escalation of desire? On the desire to use violence in other to vanquish the “Other”? The most eye-opening and throat-swallowing part of that first hour after the ban was hearing how many thoughtful people on both sides had a shiver go... See more

The past week provided a painful reminder that American cities are still unsafe for Black people. It is not a matter of politics or complex analysis. We can debate crime rates and poverty and taxes and monetary policy and gun ownership and discrimination and Police unions and personal responsibility. In fact, we should debate these things — with ea... See more

Point: civil conflict is not romantic, it’s not targeted, it’s not proportional. It’s insane. If you think the scenario of American Anarchy is a possibility, you probably want to get as far away from it as you can, regardless of your “sympathies” with either side. And then you should help build a peaceful alternative to American Anarchy. But not th

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