This was originally written fall of 2025.

Dark days, both in happenings and in symbolism.

Another politically motivated shooting, you know the one. Or two. Or three. Or more.

The assassination, or the school shooting? Which assassination, which school shooting?

Ah, school shootings. Our statistically uniquely American problem. More dark days. We shrug and shake our heads, how sad, how unsurprising.

On the internet, school shooting discourse is paradoxical and ironic. Skimmed over without space to deeply feel the atrocious loss of children’s lives, and used loudly as a chip to slot in potential policy solutions that do exist, yet never see the light of codified law, whether due to bad faith arguments and bad actor decision makers – a hockey puck that keeps getting slammed back and forth after the game is over.

But, turns out, we can still be shocked.

There is no place for violence in this country, many say, for the recent assassination matter that’s making an unavoidable beat. It’s a significant sign for where this country currently pulses.

We can cite similar recent cases, or even old ones like Lincoln or JFK or Harvey Milk or Fred Hampton. Call it Blowback from One Party to the Other, and never agree on where it all began.

Shame on selective empathy and rage, oh, the irony of the same verbatim critique echoed from either Side, depending on the token event.

In the past decade, the curtain of respectability politics—where the public stage had a sense of decorum—it was in the backstage broom closet where the dirty laundry was kept. The veil has been torn, revealing what’s been molding all along. Violence grew out of the heart.

It is increasingly dangerous to be a U.S. political figure precisely because of U.S. political figures eroding respectable discourse and debate. Unless there’s a United States government that responds to public opinion and represents all constituents over personal gain and preferential treatment toward their crony buddies, we will only see more political violence. Violent rhetoric seeds have been sown in the past decade, the field has grown to physical violence maturation, and we are now in the tragic reaping season.

But this isn’t the first harvest. Violence is one of the first crops on American soil. Political violence is just a particular grain.

Enough senseless violence, as is said, implying there is some violence that makes sense. It’s not that violence should be celebrated, no, never, it’s that condemning it isn’t enough.

American culture has long since been desensitized to violence of all flavors, in words, in policy, in oppressive systems, in physical attacks, in war (worth noting the U.S. has a bipartisan rich love affair with war). Yet proving the majority can agree after all, Americans’ disapproval of Israel’s military action towards Palestinians has now reached 60 percent. So why are we continuing to fight each other instead of the real bullies?

The internet has only made us more aware of what’s always been occurring. We’re drowning because we’re drinking from the firehouse of a 24-hour news cycle that feels more like 12. All the same cycles happening in the 1860s or the 1960s, but it felt limited to politicians, those above, as that’s what made national news. It doesn’t really touch us civilians— unless you were Black, Brown, woman, or queer, of course.

Where there’s a majority agreement, there is supposed democracy, common ground that should become the base of policy solutions. A majority of Americans (61%) say it is too easy to legally obtain a gun. Gun reform proposals are not synonymous with striking the 2nd Amendment, contrary to what a thumbnail-sized face with a confusing and inflammatory If Jesus had a gun, He’d still be alive today comment might have you believe. But alas, too many obscenely rich and powerful policymakers profit from our fighting each other, so they stoke the fire, look away from the blaze, and we get lost in the smoke.

We are all susceptible to using horrific events to anchor whatever ideology one already has.

It’s within your rights to be silent on an issue. You cannot force another to feel grief or empathy—besides, we are all sick of performative politics. Instead, consider striving for alignment with one’s values, first defining what those are. Build on those values with opinions that evolve with new information, and avoid being emotionally hijacked by rage culture on the internet.

It is even within your rights to be angry. Anger is a signal, and many injustices deserve aching anger. The priority list of what one becomes righteously angry about is personal choice, and a peek into one’s character, so place your anger well, alchemize to action thoughtfully. If you’re tired of looking from left to right, look in.

Never all, but there is much pain that is preventable. From the top down and the bottom up.

There’s a reason the Podcaster Assassination strikes a cord with most republicans and incites compassion not offered to others. The community I was raised in sees him and sees themselves: Christian, white, conservative, family man. Shared values that appear to deserve their grief.

Expanding empathy means overcoming one’s earlier notions, and listening, really listening, to those different from you. This doesn’t mean agree. It means you’re willing to try to understand, not just hear to identify attack points or argue semantics. This is a fact of what it means to be human - force can change behavior temporarily, but it cannot change the mind. There is no compelling anyone to change without rising above instead of getting even.

Initiating communication with those who dehumanize my friends and family is a weak, even spineless idea, one might think, It’s too late. Frankly, this could very well be true, or become irrefutably true in the near future. No naïveté - the situation is dire. There is a brewing, the time for talking is ticking. It is indeed urgent.

Some think we’re beyond any attempts for reconciliation given the often referenced Deep Political Divide that is actually personal after all - it’s not just abstract Right and Left, it’s between families, friends, and local communities - isolations that have only deepened, and it’s a slow, perhaps impossible climb out of a canyon that keeps widening. But does that mean we shouldn’t attempt it? Perhaps it’s worth the tough and uncomfortable conversations, worth the face-to-face awkwardness, worth the genuine curiosity to ask a question and listen to understand the answer, and with it, a bit more of the human.

We are expected to lose.

We’re tired in the soul, every inch of human identity is fighting commodification. We lack clarity in the intentionally incomprehensible news cycle that screams at us to care about everything and nothing simultaneously. Our vices are studied and gamified against us, our nuanced experiences reduced to dataism, our addictions celebrated as someone else profits, our earth-limited time and attention reduced to virtual mining with no depths to reach.

The only winners here are those profiting off our attention and susceptibility to rage and othering. There’s no money in one-anotherness. A house divided against itself falls.

Are we not all limited to typically empathize with those who mirror a piece of ourselves?

We are beyond sense, we are in madness. There’s a contagious disease combo of hypocrisy and refusal to give a do-over to anyone who makes a mistake.

Are we not all deserving of a second chance when we fall victim to rage culture, the worst sides of ourselves, and say something reductive, callous, or stupid on the internet? It’s a virtual world that’s only as real as we make it.

Foolishness has already won and it’s picking up speed. These thoughtless online engagements about where to put one’s outrage instead of what to do with it is endlessly distracting and makes us all losers.

Are we not all a bit hardened, whether consciously or unconsciously, and lack compassion for someone else’s pain when they’ve caused harm?

One deeply American quality is a love for the underdog. The American Dream story is rooted in humble beginnings and overcoming adversity. It’s an odd, surreal thing to be arguing so vehemently about who the underdogs are, when it feels so obvious who arenot. We all have an underdog within our own life or in a legend we admire, and it’s not those at the tippy top with unfathomable amounts of wealth, control, and influence. An underdog is an underdog because they are expected to lose.

My church-going brother, who once voted for Trump and regrets it, will cite his husband’s immigration lawyer, who told him she checks for updates with breakfast every morning because the laws and processes are changing so often.

My husband’s Mexican side—their grief is with friends who have been detained, deported, and or disappeared without due process or criminal records. They’ll talk about how they know someone moving back to Mexico because they can’t take the stress of a golden cage, after living in the United States for thirty years. It’s never been this bad, they’ve said.

We are getting played. We are getting played into despondency and dehumanizing our neighbors, who have way more in common with us than the dominating “leaders” we heroize.

Direct the anger to the overlords, not the underdogs. Not our neighbors. Not our families. Not online commenters. Reduce the violence of all kinds, hold off the weapons for as long as possible. We need backbone, direction, organization, and a relentless willingness to continue to try for common ground. As a collective and as an individual. We need imperfect allyship. There are other avenues we haven’t yet exhausted, available to our particular skillsets. We all have our roles to play, and in fact, we do need each other in order to stand a chance.

Perhaps it is foolish to continue to try, but what else?

No one else is coming. If not us, who?

Perhaps we can agree on this. Wouldn’t that be something…