The state of the political world has been completely off the rails over the past several months, and I fear it’s only going to get worse.
Political violence is the use of force, coercion, or the threat of violence with the goal of achieving political objectives; to influence power, policy or ideology. Triggered in the past couple of days, more specifically with the assassination of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, political violence has skyrocketed in the past year, and it’s worrying.
During his 2024 presidential campaigns, Donald Trump was shot during a speech in Pennsylvania. In 2025, we have three major attacks against huge influences in the political world; the firebombing of Governor of Pennsylvania Josh Shapiro’s house, the shootings of two Minnesota legislators, Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman, and Kirk’s murder.
One of the greatest things about America is our freedom of speech, which is supposed to allow people with even wildly different views to co-exist under a single government, as well as a society. The violence surrounding politics doesn’t just target its leaders–it targets us as Americans as well; violence breeds more violence. Each different attack against political leaders INSPIRES retaliation, and radicalizes more people. This normalizes aggression within the political world; history has shown us far too many times.
The way that the national news media has covered each of these attacks has also been horrifying. Let me highlight the most recent coverage – the assassination of Charlie Kirk. News stations that are more right-wing have called for “war” against the “lunatic left” and are blaming and generalizing different special interest groups for isolated attacks. This breeds more hatred for these people, and there’s no telling how they may react going forward.
One left-wing media station claimed that Kirk may have been killed by celebratory gunfire, and some stations seemed to celebrate the fact that he was gone. Political violence isn’t something that should be celebrated–no one deserves to lose their life over an opinion.
Unfortunately for a lot of us, the United States of America isn’t that united anymore. We are a nation so divided on so many things, and it’s horrible to watch unfold. Political issues are meant to be decided at the ballot boxes, not through motivated attacks on people. Condemning this shouldn’t have to be a partisan position. With each act of political violence, by either party, pushes us more to a tipping point than people might realize.
We live in a society where seeing innocent children being murdered at their schools has become normalized, more and more violence becomes unchecked, and there’s absolutely nothing that gets done about it.
It is time for change. Pivotal issues like these shouldn’t have to be partisan issues, we should all be coming forward and making these changes together. We shouldn’t have to live like this.
If our leaders cannot come together, then it falls to us as citizens to demand better through the most powerful tool we have: our vote in the ballot boxes. If you’re not registered to vote, please register here. If you think your vote doesn’t matter, it does. We have the power to make these changes as the people of the United States of America. We NEED to come together as a whole, united, and make these changes, to save all of us. Please go vote in the upcoming elections in 2025 and 2026, as well as onwards. Enough is enough.
