The Unraveling: How Political Violence Reveals America’s Fraying Social Fabric
September 12, 2025
The assassination of Charlie Kirk is not just a horrifying crime; it is a sign that America’s civic fabric is unraveling. In a healthy democracy, the civil sphere acts as a buffer between political competition and physical violence. Opponents can battle fiercely over ideas yet still see one another as fellow citizens. When that recognition erodes, politics no longer feels like debate. It begins to feel like war.
For years, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has warned that when people see their rivals not as wrong, but as evil, the guardrails of democracy collapse. Once politics becomes a fight between good and evil, ordinary limits vanish. Violence doesn’t just become thinkable—it can come to feel righteous. Kirk’s murder was not a random act. It was the predictable result of years of escalating demonization and a culture increasingly comfortable with seeing the other side as fundamentally inhuman.
New data from YouGov show how far we have drifted. When asked whether it is always unacceptable to feel happy about the death of a public figure they oppose, just over half of Americans said yes. Nearly half now leave room for conditional acceptance or outright approval in reaction to a political death.
The divides are especially stark by age and party. Among adults under 45, only about 44 percent said celebrating such a death is always wrong. A majority of younger Americans, raised amid the algorithm-driven outrage of social media, see politics as an existential struggle in which some figures are worthy of scorn or worse. Older Americans hold the line far more firmly: roughly 63 percent of those aged 45 to 64 and 70 percent of those over 65 reject such celebrations outright, a generational gap of more than twenty-five points.
The partisan gap reveals something deeply troubling about our political moment. While three-quarters of Republicans say celebrating political deaths is always wrong, only four in ten Democrats agree. This isn’t about the moral superiority of one party over another—it reflects how different segments of America have internalized different norms about political conflict and civic boundaries. Each side sees the other’s rhetoric as uniquely dangerous while remaining stubbornly blind to the extremism and violent undercurrents in their own ranks.
Social media fuels these divides. Outrage sells, and platforms reward caricature and contempt. Viral posts turn opponents into existential threats. When that language saturates our discourse, citizens begin to view politics as literal combat rather than civic competition.
Haidt calls this “Manichean thinking,” a worldview dividing society into pure good and pure evil. In this frame, compromise becomes betrayal, dialogue weakness, and negotiation pointless. If opponents are evil, they must be defeated or destroyed. The rules of civic life—mutual respect, limits on rhetoric, rejection of violence—no longer apply.
Kirk’s assassination must be understood in this context. To many of his critics, he was not simply a political actor but a symbol of everything wrong with the country. In that climate, harming him was not just permissible to a deranged individual; it was, in some twisted way, righteous. The shooter may have pulled the trigger, but the cultural conditions that made the act conceivable were built over years of escalating hostility.
The generational findings are especially troubling. Nearly six in ten young Americans are either open to or comfortable with celebrating a political death. These are the citizens who will inherit our democracy. If these attitudes harden, the civil sphere itself will collapse.
We must pull back from the brink. Civic renewal cannot be outsourced to Washington or left to cable news. Parents must model it at the dinner table. Teachers must demonstrate it in classrooms. Faith leaders must preach it from pulpits. Small groups and local leaders can set expectations just as powerfully as presidents or senators.
There is still a silent majority who reject this path. The challenge is to mobilize them before it is too late. Leaders of every institution—from universities to newsrooms to political parties- must speak with one voice: Violence and its celebration are never acceptable. No caveats, no excuses.
Education must play a central role. Young people need more than civics facts; they need moral formation. They must learn that opponents, however wrongheaded, still have dignity and worth. Programs that bring students together across ideological lines, teach debate, and reward cooperation can rebuild the habits of restraint and empathy that democracy requires.
Kirk’s death is a tragedy. It is also a warning; we are close to the edge. Whether this moment becomes a turning point or the start of something darker depends on whether we can restore the moral boundaries of the civil sphere. We must remember that in a free society, our opponents are not enemies to destroy but neighbors to persuade. Fierce disagreement is essential. Violence is fatal.
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