We must talk about what we do about political violence.
On September 10, a gunman shot and killed Charlie Kirk, a political influencer and ally of President Trump.
I disagreed with Charlie Kirk on many things. However, even now as I write this, I am heartbroken over this loss of life.
I am heartbroken because Charlie Kirk was a human being who could suffer and hurt and who had hopes and dreams, a family, just like I do.
So, I’m heartbroken because we share common humanity.
But I am also heartbroken because Charlie Kirk’s death is emblematic of a growing trend of political violence.
You might think this post specifically targets people who respond a certain way to Charlie Kirk’s death.
It doesn’t.
This post is about how any person responds to any act of political violence.
So it is, in part, about Charlie Kirk. But it is also about shootings and assaults of democratic political leaders, as well as republican leaders.
And it is about Palestine and Gaza.
It’s about Russia and Ukraine.
It’s about me. And you.
“The Death of Julius Caesar” by Vincenzo Camuccini.
Now, the title of this post is “What We Do About Political Violence.”
And you could read that title in one of two ways.
First, you could read it as a call for a diagnosis of what we, in fact, do about political violence.
Second, you could read it as a moral call to figure out what we should do about political violence.
I want to address both these readings, starting with the diagnosis.
In the last decade or so, as political violence has escalated, a common pattern emerges:
We (meaning folks in general) mourn the political deaths of people in line with our political causes.
And we ignore or even applaud the deaths of people who oppose our political causes.
And when we do this, we believe we do so for moral reasons.
But in fact, we do so for aesthetic reasons that are often divorced from morality.
Here is what I mean.
We often like people who are politically like us. They please us.
So, we mourn their death resulting from political violence.
And we often don’t like our political opponents. They displease us.
So, we ignore and even applaud their death resulting from political violence.
But mourning the violent deaths of people we like and ignoring the violent deaths of people we don’t like is not a moral stance.
It’s an aesthetic one.
By aesthetic, I mean, it’s a stance rooted in pleasure and displeasure, which are not (by themselves) moral principles.
Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard inspires my discussion of the aesthetic stance in this post.
This moral and aesthetic distinction is important.
For example, imagine that someone says, “I obey the traffic rules I like; and I disobey the traffic rules I don’t like.”
We would probably say something like, “Well, look. There is a moral principle higher and more important than your likes and dislikes. That higher principle is one of order, safety, and prudence.”
When we only obey the traffic rules we like, we base our actions on aesthetics—or feelings of pleasure.
That’s an aesthetic stance (a stance of feeling).
Not a moral one.
Here’s another example.
Imagine that regarding laws against theft, we say “I respect people’s private property if I think the people are good. But if I think they are bad people, then I approve of stealing their property.”
In this example, our underlying argument is this: “I respect the property of people I find pleasing. I disrespect the property of people I find displeasing.”
And someone might reply to us, “There’s a principle higher than your feelings of pleasure and displeasure. It is respect for private property and basic human rights and dignity.”
This higher moral principle is more important and carries more authority than our individual feelings of pleasure and displeasure.
That’s what moral principles do.
They call us out of our immediate feelings of pleasure and displeasure, which are often arbitrary and chaotic. Such feelings are also often self-centered.
Moral ideals invite us to order our actions, thinking, and life according to higher principles.
These higher principles aim towards ends like goodness, beauty, love, justice, and responsibility for everyone.
You can read more about moral principles here: Develop Your Own Moral and Ethical Code.
By the way, the philosopher Friedrich Schiller argues that aesthetics can lead us to morality, when rightly understood.
Now, the problem is that most of us are accustomed to living according to pleasure and displeasure.
We live this way, even when we don’t fully realize it, rather than living according to consistent moral principles.
That’s because moral principles often require that we behave in ways that we find uncomfortable and even frustrating.
For instance, moral principles require that we respect people’s belongings when we would rather take them.
And moral principles also require that we treat people we don’t like (for whatever reason) with basic kindness and civility.
So, because moral principles often feel uncomfortable to us, we sometimes respond by retreating into aesthetics—living according to what we like and dislike.
But we also like to think of ourselves as good and moral people.
As a result, whether consciously or unconsciously, we become very skilled at convincing ourselves that our aesthetic positions are moral positions.
And we also become highly skilled in convincing ourselves that all the opinions and beliefs we like are the moral ones.
We further convince ourselves that the opinions and beliefs we don’t like are the immoral ones.
A classic example of someone confusing the moral and aesthetic stance is Jonah in the Old Testament.
God calls Jonah to go and preach to the Ninevites, exhorting them to turn from their evil ways, lest they be destroyed.
Jonah hates the Ninevites, who are the sworn enemies of Israel
In fact, Jonah hates the Ninevites so badly that he doesn’t want them to turn from their wicked ways at all.
He just wants God to destroy them.
Jonah is a prophet of rage.
So, Jonah tries to flee from God, taking a detour which lands him in the belly of a whale.
“Jonah and the Whale”, by Pieter Lastman
The whale then vomits up Jonah, and Jonah does eventually go to Nineveh.
And as God commanded him, he exhorts the Ninevites to repent.
Surprisingly, they do so.
Even more surprisingly (or perhaps not), Jonah is totally depressed that they repent.
That’s because, once again, he wants them destroyed, not restored to God.
Jonah’s stance towards Nineveh was clearly an aesthetic one. Not a moral one.
He wanted beauty and goodness for the people he liked—his fellow Israelites.
And he wanted suffering and death for the people he disliked—the Ninevites.
At one point, God confronts Jonah about his death wish for Ninevah, saying,
“And should I not pity Nineveh, the great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand who cannot discern between their right and their left?”[1]
God points out to Jonah that his politics of rage led him to develop the very character of violence and destruction Jonah hated in the Ninevites.
God was calling Jonah, among other things, to leave behind his aesthetic stance and to adopt a moral one [2].
I recently watched the movie No Man of God, which skillfully portrays the moral stance.
It’s a movie about real-life FBI agent Bill Hagmaier who spent hours talking with serial killer Ted Bundy before Bundy was executed.
Hagmaier knew Bundy was guilty, and he detested the horrible crimes Bundy committed.
It would have been so easy for Hagmaier to refuse to speak to Bundy; to do all he could to speed Bundy’s death; to rejoice at this terrible man’s imminent execution; to applaud his death.
Instead, Hagmaier spent hours talking with Bundy, trying to understand him.
He did this so he could help bring closure to the families of Bundy’s victims.
The movie also suggests that in the course of his conversations with Bundy, Hagmaier wanted Bundy to make things right in any limited way he could for the sake of Bundy’s humanity and soul.
At one point Bundy tells Hagmaier that he needs to write a letter to his mother, but he doesn’t know what to say.
Hagmaier says, “You tell the truth. You apologize. You say you’re sorry.”
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