Sep 19, 2025
We’ll see if this is truly the turning point people seem to think it is. With some weariness, I ask, “What’s going to change exactly? America will become a violent country filled with guns and inflammatory rhetoric? The power of the state will be used without the restraint of the law or rights to attack its enemies?” We’re there already. The true disaster would be to use this to end or injure free political life in this country. I think I can say without being disingenuous that’s not what Charlie Kirk lived or died for, if we are to take his public professions at face value. But I think even an attempt to impose tyranny or mass repression would ultimately fail. For better or worse, this is not a particularly governable country. That is what we saw on Wednesday. After events like this, I always return to Richard Hofstadter’s conclusion of his essay Reflections on Violence in the United States:
“When one considers American history as a whole, it is hard to think of any very long period in which it could be said that the country has been consistently well governed. And yet its political system is, on the whole, a resilient and well-seasoned one, and on the strength of its history one must assume that it can summon enough talent and good will to cope with its afflictions. To cope with them — but not, I think, to master them in any thoroughly decisive or admirable fashion. The nation seems to slouch onward into its uncertain future like some huge inarticulate beast, too much attainted by wounds and ailments to be robust, but too strong and resourceful to succumb.”
I think our huge inarticulate beast will amble on. The nation will have to endure its sad passions. That endurance is perhaps the most we can hope for at the moment.