Less Crazy, More Dangerous
Further thoughts on spiraling violence
In yesterday’s post I sketched one way to think about whether we are entering an exponential spiral of political assassinations. Here’s another.
Roughly half of baseline political assassins are plainly crazy. Lone cranks, voices in their heads, delusional manifestos. If that proportion drops—if more killers are soberly political—that’s a signifier of spiral dynamics taking hold.
It will be interesting to see what motivated the Charlie Kirk assassin. Public response varies sharply depending on whether the killer is “crazy” or “political.” Recall how muted the reaction to the Trump attack became once the shooter was classified as crazy.
Watch the ratio. If the crazies thin out, we may be on the slope.
We may be on that slippery slope Jim. I had the fortune of delivering the keynote address at yesterday’s 9/11 remembrance service at Michigan’s War Memorial on the shores of Lake St. Clair. As I took the podium gazing over the large lake it felt surreal that I was about to talk about one attack on the heels of a very public assassination of a well known person. That same thought hit me - was he crazy or sane and calculating? If the latter, we may be entering a very dangerous phase. With wars and economic battles raging all around the globe, we cannot afford to treat one another here in America with so-called logical disdain. It’s as if your liver goes to war against your lungs. The outcome won’t be pretty.
Early indications are that he was a gamer (online memes, trolling, etc) .. conservative family values with some degree of hunting experience .. we may just be looking at a combination of dehumanization and rage baiting now being translated IRL