The Generalist

One's identity is far more than one's profession.

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Live by the Sword, Die by the Sword

Live by the Sword, Die by the Sword

The murder of Charlie Kirk is tragic. Violence has no place in a democracy, and it should have no place in human relations at any scale. Full stop.

Yet we must also admit that this killing is not a bolt from the blue. It is the grim, predictable consequence of a culture that has allowed violent rhetoric to flourish and has winked at those who carry it into action. The sword that Kirk and his allies unsheathed — as a metaphor, as a political weapon — has now cut back.

Charlie Kirk was one of the loudest voices of the MAGA era. Through Turning Point USA, he amplified messages that vilified opponents, questioned elections, and stoked resentment. He portrayed politics not as a contest of ideas but as a war for the nation’s survival. For his followers, this was energizing. For his critics, it was destabilizing.

The alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, was no progressive. Early reports suggest he was influenced by a strain of extremism so far to the right that Kirk himself appeared too soft, too compromised. His rifle carried inscriptions, grim slogans, a private catechism of radicalization. This was not an act of the left striking the right — it was the fringe consuming its own.

Violence does not erupt in a vacuum. It is cultivated. In the years since January 6th, a Republican president pardoned those convicted of storming the Capitol. Some Republican leaders have called them “hostages” and “political prisoners.” Ashli Babbitt — shot while attempting to breach the Speaker’s Lobby — has been elevated to the status of a martyr and patriot.

These choices are not mere symbolism; they are signals. They tell followers that violence in service of the cause is not just forgivable but honorable. They transform criminality into heroism, and they dare the next zealot to go further.

Democratic leaders have not been perfect — property damage during protests was at times excused or underplayed — but the left has neither endorsed nor executed a systemic pattern of pardons or promises of immunity for violent actors. That is the asymmetry we face: one party increasingly normalizes force as a tool of politics, while the other still clings, however imperfectly, to peaceful government of, by, and for the people.

I remain amazed at the restraint shown by the Capitol Police and other law enforcement officers on January 6th. Facing a mob intent on violence — some wielding weapons, many screaming threats — the officers mostly refrained from drawing or firing their weapons. They absorbed beatings, chemical sprays, and broken bones, buying time for lawmakers to escape and for order to be restored. That was discipline. That was courage. That was a commitment to life over death, even when threatened with death themselves.

Do we owe a similar discipline in our words as we react to Charlie Kirk’s death? It is tempting to say that he courted violence and met the fate his rhetoric invited — to make “live by the sword” a kind of cosmic justice.

But democracy requires us to reject vengeance as a political language. We can condemn Kirk’s divisive speech and the politics he championed without celebrating his death. To do otherwise mirrors the very logic we oppose: that political differences should be settled by force.

A Warning and a Plea

This killing is a warning: the flames that leaders stoke cannot be so easily controlled. The sword, once drawn, swings in all directions. Those who call their opponents traitors should not be surprised when someone decides to treat them as such.

We are approaching a breaking point. If we wish to save democracy — not just its machinery but its spirit — we must disarm our speech as well as our hands. We must demand of leaders that they model restraint, that they stop rewarding extremism, that they make clear that violence, whether from left, right, or fringe, is intolerable.

Charlie Kirk’s death should not become a rallying cry for revenge. It should become a moment of clarity: that no one, not even our fiercest opponents, should be gunned down for what they believe. The sword must be sheathed, for all of us.

Notes

  1. Killing of Charlie Kirk – Wikipedia summary of events
  2. Charlie Kirk shooting suspect captured after manhunt – Reuters report
  3. Accused sniper charged in Utah – AP News coverage
  4. Bullet casings carried political messages – Daily Beast investigation
  5. Rhetoric around January 6th pardons and martyrdom – NPR analysis

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What Has Our Attention?

Here is my latest post on Substack.

This was written using ChatGPT4o with extensive prompting. Time spent, about one hour.

What Has Our Attention?
Moral Attention in an Age of Obsession

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Jacob Hoopes

Jacob Hoopes is an activist Quaker and the son of a much respected and loved Quaker friend of mine. His situation is emerging as an example of the administration’s ongoing campaign to intimidate those who protest the strident attacks on citizens’ rights and democracy itself.

Law journalist Joyce Vance says, “The worst risk in this moment is that the administration will manage to normalize its treatment of immigrants. That it will normalize the denial of due process to people with brown skin. That it will rock the foundations of our Constitution, which offers fundamental protections to all people, not just citizens.”

Silencing protest is essential to “normalizing” abuse of power. This amounts to the state-sponsored terrorism that Timothy Snyder has warned of.

I don’t know the specifics of the charges, or anything about the circumstances. But it seems extrodinary that Jacob was arrested at his home weeks after the protest.

Updates:

July 29

The DOJ issued a press release after the arraignment. Fox News covered it. Hundreds of thousands protested peacefully all across the country on No Kings day. The No Kings protests were peaceful, even upbeat and cordial. As your follow the emerging events, be skeptical of accounts that seek to generalize or sensationalize.

Portland man accused by federal government of assaulting ICE officer
Robert Jacob Hoopes was arrested more than a month after the June 14 protest.
Portland Man Charged with Assaulting a Federal Law Enforcement Officer and Damaging Federal Property During Violent Protest at Local ICE Office
A Portland man made his initial appearance in federal court today after committing various offenses – including aggravated assault of a federal officer and damaging federal property – during a violent protest at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in South Portland.
Portland Quaker charged with assaulting federal officer in anti-ICE riot
A man whose father said he was a “lifelong Quaker,” is facing charges after his alleged actions during an anti-ICE protest in Portland, Ore. He now faces federal charges.
Portland man charged with assaulting federal officer, damaging property during ICE protests
A Portland man made his first appearance Monday in federal court after being charged with multiple crimes relating to a protest at the Portland ICE office, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Oregon.

July 30

The ethics and objectivity of the Trump/GOP DOJ is severly compromised. Read this clip from Talking Points Memo:

‘Fuck the Justice Manual’: A New Trump DOJ Assault on the Rule of Law

The Justice Manual is the DOJ’s internal handbook of rules on prosecutorial conduct. According to a damning Bloomberg Law piece, Bill Essayli, Trump’s interim US Attorney in Los Angeles, said “fuck the Justice Manual” in response to questions from line attorneys about his pursuit of indictments against anti-ICE protesters. (Morning Memo has previously discussed reports of LA-based grand juries not returning indictments against protesters and prosecutors being forced to drop felony charges because of false evidence presented by arresting officers.) Bloomberg sourced the quote to four current and former prosecutors in the office.

Here is another article about Hoopes arrest:

Supporters Pack Courtroom for Portlander Facing Federal Protest Charges
Robert Jacob Hoopes and his girlfriend looked out their bedroom window last Friday morning to find FBI agents surrounding their home. A minute later, the armed officers were pounding at their door, demanding they open up, reportedly without providing a warrant. Eventually, they learned the federal officers were there to arrest Hoopes, 24, for allegedly throwing a rock at an ICE officer and damaging the Portland ICE facility during a protest in June. Hoopes, who…

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State Intimidation = State Terrorism

Right-wing politicians in PA want to increase the penalties for public protest. Under the guise of protecting law enforcement personnel performing their lawful function, they want to stiffen the penalties for “interfering.”

There is a saying among law enforcement insiders, “You can beat the wrap, but you can’t beat the ride.” By this they mean that police have the law on their side when they subdue you and detain you even if they don’t actually have proof that you were committing a crime. The rightness of their action gets adjudicated after you are apprehended (the ride). It’s a citizen’s duty to cooperate and not impede law enforcement.

So what if the police become strident and abuse the power granted to them?

DoJ drops cases against LA protesters after officers caught making false claims
Revealed: records show border patrol gave inaccurate testimony about people it jailed. Prosecutors now face ‘embarrassing’ dismissals

Dropping cases doesn’t cure the harm. In fact, being detained costs time, money, and may put the detainee in harm’s way if they are thrown in among truly violent lawbreakers. One of the common tactics is to detain protestors at a police station in a bad neighborhood, then release them late at night onto the street.

Seeking justice after the fact is challenging and requires significant time and resources. Sadly, unbridled power corrupts those who wield it. America has already stepped over the line into the brutal techniques that authoritarians use to suppress dissent. DHS/ICE police are becoming today’s Brownshirts. (The “Brownshirts,” officially known as the Sturmabteilung (SA), were a paramilitary organization associated with the Nazi Party in Germany.).

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The Devil is in the Details

Sometimes delving into the details reveals more than the big picture.  HCR (click) shows how the senseless dismantling of our nation’s emergency management system impacts ordinary people.  As a former first responder, I know about the detailed and nuanced planning that goes into preparing, responding, and recovering from emergencies.  The Trump administration sees only bloated bureaucracy “the deep state”; I see planning and readiness.  Think about your local firehouse.  It’s a garage with very expensive trucks parked facing out with a full tank of fuel and thousands of dollars worth of tools and equipment. All of it is unused and idle almost all the time. Seems wasteful, doesn’t it?

But on that truck, every piece of equipment is in its place, cleaned, checked out, and service-ready. That’s so that when your home is burning, firefighters have what they need for rescue and firefighting and can deploy it quickly.  Similar preparations were in place for the disaster that happened on the Guadalupe River.  The weather service had tools to estimate rainfall and predict flash floods. They had planned for communications to local officials who could warn those in the path of the water.  But things went terribly wrong. The individual who should have received the warning and transmitted it to the locals was retired early in Trump’s cost-cutting drive for DOGE. The locals weren’t warned for a critical three hours. To see how rapidly water rises, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqXXbjN-hhs

You first see a side channel of the river, dry except for the mud. Then you see the leading edge of a flow of water.  Thirty-seven minutes later, you see a river, a quarter mile across, the bridge inundated as a house floats up to it!  I try to imagine trying to evacuate a camp full of girls in less than half an hour as those waters surged.

In the aftermath, FEMA terminated the contracts for the phone banks taking calls for assistance from flood victims. They had run out of money to pay them.

It took Christy Noem three days to mobilize the Federal recovery. The Trump administration is lying and covering up these successive failures, and there are doubtless many more that I don’t know about yet.

Ignorant, incompetent, criminally negligent, inhumanly cruel. As a Quaker, I try not to have a hateful heart. But when I see the Trump administration undermining and destroying humane systems that took years and thousands of hours of training to build, systems that keep us safe, my blood boils.

The justification? We need the tax cuts. We need a bigger, meaner, ICE.

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Three Months

Since March, I have been writing to my reps in Congress daily. Most of them are posted here. I reviewed those notes today, and the drive toward authoritarianism is very clear.

It is not just Donald J. Trump. There is a cult behind him that is far more dangerous. He is useful, for now, because he is shameless and easily manipulated to move thier game forward. Keep an eye on Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and JD Vance. The only question is whether, before the midterms, they can consolidate so much power in the executive branch that the outcome of the midterms won’t matter.

Part of this attack on democracy is the assault on freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. If they can establish the power of the President to use the military to prevent demonstrations, and at the same time, they can use harassment with litigation and investigations to suppress the media, this assault will succeed.

Next, like China and other totalitarian governments, he will act to suppress communication among dissidents. As the compromised Washington Post’s banner still proclaims, “Democracy dies in Darkness.”

This is really happening. Will the sleeping giant awake in time?

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Worth Your Attention

Here are two links I recommend that you read soon. The first gives an excellent analysis of what drives the MAGA movement. You may even see a path to feeling empathy and compassion for the worldview that fuels the vitriol. But more important, the insights it offers may help you avoid adding fuel to the fire as you defend and assert your own values.

They Warned Us in 1945: Fascism in America Would Look Like Patriotism
How MAGA Became the Psychological Blueprint They Described

The second link is to Timothy Snyder’s free materials. On Tyranny, if you have not read it, is essential for understanding how to meet the threats democracy faces today. The materials offered by Snyder are helpful to both remind us of the basics, and to spread the word.

Resources – Timothy Snyder
Resources from On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder

. . . and something much lighter from Snyder’s brother-in-law:

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The Hidden Cost of DOGE

My opinion piece was accepted and published by the Herald on May 8.

The hidden cost of DOGE
In pretending that all government services are wasteful, DOGE has undermined the very systems that sustain fairness, innovation and opportunity in America.