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Some years ago, trying to understand what it might take to break America’s fever of political violence, I asked a former Justice Department official what she thought about the possibility of a second civil war in the United States.
Mary McCord, a former federal prosecutor who has spent much of her career thinking about how to combat extremism, was worried about worsening political violence. (I favor a simple definition of political violence: actions intended to provoke or prevent change.) And like many of the people I have interviewed about political violence over the years—including top military officials, members of Congress, local and federal law enforcement, political scientists, terrorism experts, peace negotiators, and others—she told me that cycles of horrific political violence can perpetuate themselves for a generation or more after they have taken hold. Once a certain threshold is crossed, political violence tends to get worse before it gets better, in many cases cataclysmically so.
But McCord also said something in passing that I’ve thought about repeatedly since, including yesterday after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Wouldn’t most Americans, if faced with the prospect of killing their neighbors and destroying the country from within, probably still choose peace? She told me that she wished people would stop and think: “Do you really want us to be in a bloody civil war for 10 or 15 years? You’re going to see your grandkids get killed. Do you really want that?”
Perhaps, she suggested, America’s salvation would come from widespread attachment to the mundane comforts and prosperity that accompanies prolonged periods of relative peace. Americans “don’t like it when they can’t get strawberries in the winter,” she went on. “This idea of revolution. Really? Is that really what you want?” Societies that dissolve into civil war are “not having a good time,” she said. “It’s not fun.”
Even back when our conversation took place, in 2022, anyone could see that political violence was getting worse—there was the insurrection, of course, but also the hammer attack, the riots, the conspiracy theorist with the rifle in the pizza parlor, the congressman shot at baseball practice, the congresswoman shot in the supermarket parking lot, the waves of cynicism and hatred emanating from millions of tiny screens, the militiamen standing back and standing by.
You need only a glancing familiarity with American history to know that violent times almost always lead to violent crackdowns by the state, and that such crackdowns almost always entail an evisceration of basic American freedoms. Donald Trump’s speech last night about Kirk’s murder, in which the president vilified his political enemies, should frighten any American who rejects political violence, cares about civil liberties, and dislikes government interference.
That “strawberries in winter” conversation stuck with me—both because I found the example to be darkly funny, this idea that a mass desire for out-of-season antioxidants might pull America back from the brink, and also because it seemed like an impossibly fragile hope. What if people don’t actually care about the strawberries?
In the day since Kirk’s killing, I’ve noticed a pronounced difference between the people who are attempting to deescalate and inspire calm—versus those who are lashing out and pitting Americans against each other. Those who mock or celebrate Kirk’s death are part of a cycle of worsening violence. Those who have declared war, or call their political opponents “evil,” are part of the same. “We’re not supposed to say this,” the MAGA influencer slash venture capitalist Shaun Maguire tweeted yesterday. “But the truth is we’re at War.” (Maguire made a follow-up post a day later—“I want to say this very clearly, do not respond with violence. But be loud as hell.” It did not go viral; his declaration of war did go viral, and is still being amplified.) From the far-right influencer Andrew Tate: “Civil war.” From the MAGA influencer Chaya Raichik’s Libs of TikTok account: “THIS IS WAR.”
America is now, quite obviously, deep into this particular cycle of violence, with no clear notion of where and how it will end. Acts of political violence in the past 12 months alone have included the murder of a health-care CEO in Manhattan, an arson attack against the governor of Pennsylvania, the murder of a protester in Colorado, the murder of a Minnesota state representative in her home, and yesterday the assassination of an activist speaking at a college campus. Every deed of political violence in America is churned through the ideological and algorithmic machinery of the social web that spits out louder, uglier calls for more violence still. America’s enemies abroad—in countries hostile to democracy and American freedom—are among those who perpetuate this cycle of escalation.
But those now fantasizing about war in America, and those cheering the murder of a fellow citizen, have no earthly understanding of what truly pervasive political violence does to a society. The Civil War, our nation’s defining conflict, should only haunt us—the terrible appetite for death, the nurses in blood-drenched aprons, the flies swarming the battlefield, some 800,000 Americans dead. None of us should wish for this, or call for it. But let us also not suffer the failure of imagination that would prevent us from seeing it coming—for such negligence risks being itself a catalyst for catastrophe.
This morning, I called McCord to ask her whether Kirk’s assassination, and the reaction to it, has changed her thinking about the dangers of worsening political violence in America. I also wanted to see if she thinks her strawberries theory still holds up. She told me that she thinks about what’s happening a few different ways. First, political violence is getting worse, and that should concern everyone. The current situation is “very dangerous,” she said. And those who call for the destruction of their political enemies, regardless of their ideology, endanger everyone.
But McCord also remains convinced that most Americans do not want widespread armed conflict domestically. “I just do not believe that the vast majority of Americans would support any Civil War–type violence,” she said. Most people just want to live their lives. “There is a small group that is incredibly active on social media and cable news—and then there’s the whole rest of the population.”
Those who react to political violence by declaring war against their political enemies should understand that their outpouring of ugliness makes them not brave revolutionaries but bedfellows with the extremists who cheered for Luigi Mangione. When keyboard soldiers loudly declare war, when they characterize their political foes as malicious and subhuman, they help inspire the next violent attack. But they may not actually spur the country toward a full-fledged civil conflict. They may not even mean “war” when they use that word, but something more like a soft secession, where different coalitions of U.S. states carry out different visions of what America is and should be. (Also not a thing we should try.) Many of them have not bothered to define what they mean by “war” at all. And although both are atrocious, there is in fact a meaningful difference between targeted political violence and the amassing of armies to fight one another.
The militarization of domestic law enforcement—days ago Trump declared “war” on Chicago, and he’s sent National Guard troops to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.—is currently mashing together the scourge of political violence with the threat of a state crackdown. This, too, is part of the cycle of political violence, and it is dangerous for every American’s freedom and safety.
The thing is, “people do want to have strawberries in February!” McCord told me today. “They do want to go out after work and have some beers. They do want to go to their kids’ soccer games on the weekend. Civil war talk is just that. It’s talk. I don’t see any significant fraction of the population that is at all interested in that. That doesn’t mean we aren’t going to have violence. And I do think it is going to increase.”
Americans must understand this. Incendiary rhetoric is exceedingly dangerous in a society already susceptible to further violence—particularly when layered atop the conditions that have made us so vulnerable already: highly visible wealth disparity, cratering trust in democratic institutions, severe partisan estrangement, aggrievement across the political spectrum, rapid demographic change, flourishing conspiracy theories, dehumanizing rhetoric against the “other,” and the belief among too many Americans that violence is not only called for but necessary, even righteous.
Here is what you should do today: Take note of the many Americans, especially those in positions of power, who condemn this assassination specifically, and political violence generally, full stop. Look to those who reject political violence unequivocally, regardless of whether the victim is ideologically aligned with them. The leadership of deescalation is the leadership of democracy—and political violence will only continue without it.
Anyone who seeks to understand political violence primarily through the social web—whether via Twitter, Bluesky, or the Trump administration’s nonstop torrent of emotional posting—risks being left with the impression that most Americans are spoiling for a fight that could destroy all of us. And it’s true that the complexities of our informational environment pose real challenges to public safety and national security. But walk outside anywhere in America and you are unlikely to find someone declaring war or mocking the dead the way extremists do on Twitter. You may find people who are angry, and who disagree with each other. You may encounter protesters (peaceful protest, in addition to being protected by the First Amendment, is one of the best antidotes to political violence). But most Americans are simply going about their lives—and most, I have to believe, want nothing to do with civil war, and wish for an end to political assassinations, too.
Earlier this week, I got to talking with a National Guardsman who was walking around near The Atlantic’s office in Washington, D.C., deployed from South Carolina for who knows how long. (“I wish I knew,” he laughed.) I asked him if the citizens of D.C.—known for their vocal opposition to Trump, and to the deployment of troops in their city—had created trouble for him. Nothing like that, he said. “They just tell us what they think, and that’s okay.” He seemed to understand it perfectly: We don’t have to all agree with one another. But without peaceful disagreement, there is no freedom at all.
