Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn spent eight years in a Soviet Gulag before he wrote the line that would make him famous outside Russia: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart.” Solzhenitsyn was not being poetic; he was describing what he had watched happen to ordinary people once they have convinced themselves that the person in front of them did not count as one. Despite Solzhenitsyn’s words being over 50 years old, the nature of political exploitation and dehumanization that he discussed still rears its ugly head today. Contrary to what the political echo chamber wants you to believe, what is happening in America today is not a simple matter of one side becoming violent, and the other mounting a righteous defense against what it believes is tyranny. The truth is that a disturbingly large number of people on both sides of the aisle have found a category of person whose death they are willing to celebrate, or at the very least reluctant to condemn. The even scarier aspect is that this category continues to expand. Three recent flashpoints show this erosion happening, with Americans falling into the trap of trying to neatly sort good and evil into camps of state, class and party, excusing violence and outright murder in a crude distortion of the liberal democratic values they claim to espouse.
Let ius start with the State. Excessive immigration enforcement under the Trump administration have produced an ugly run of violence which birthed an equally ugly appetite for celebrating or excusing it. The killing of American citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Good by Border Patrol and ICE officers, respectively, at the start of 2026 sparked headlines throughout the country. However instead of the incidents being treated as two human lives being taken too soon, they were immediately politicized and ridiculed. Within hours of the shooting, Homeland Security officials described Good as a “domestic terrorist” who had “weaponized” her vehicle before any investigation had concluded, a framing amplified by the Trump administration and contested by local officials on the ground. This eagerness to justify the death before all the facts were in, simply because the victim belonged to disfavored category, dismisses the Christian and constitutional values of grief and due process that the American Right is supposed to respect.
A movement built on caring for the vulnerable does not get to decide that some deaths are acceptable once the victim’s bank balance clears a threshold.
Moving to Class, we have also seen a consistent demonizing of the upper class — the colloquial “eat the rich” taken to its extreme. The clearest example of this sensation is the slaughter of
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and the subsequent cultish following of his alleged killer Luigi Mangione. Mangione has been elevated to folk hero status by those who have felt wronged by the health insurance industry and the upper class, a majority of which being young voters. A recent Emerson College poll shows that approximately 4 out of 10 voters aged 18-29, a staggering 39%, view Mangione’s role as “acceptable” or “somewhat acceptable.” This approval goes beyond a mere nod, however. While waiting for trial, Mangione received as many as 115 letters a day from more than 50 countries. His supporters also raised $1.8 million for his defense. The most staggering aspect of their support though is the blunt disregard for Mr. Thompsons’ life that they speak with. “I’m saying f*** Brian Thompson. I don’t give a flying f*** he died,” said Ashley Rojas, one of Mangione’s supporters. Lena Weissbrot adds that Thompson’s teenage sons “are better off without him” and should “enjoy the blood money.” Whatever you think of America’s healthcare system, Brian Thompson was a man, not a symbol, and he left behind a wife and two teenage sons who will grow up without him, Rojas and Weissbrot did not just excuse his killing, they stripped him down to his job title until there was no human left to mourn. The same values that Mangione’s defenders claim to hold — compassion, empathy, a belief that no life is worth more than another — are the casualties of their framing. A movement built on caring for the vulnerable does not get to decide that some deaths are acceptable once the victim’s bank account clears a threshold.
This hypocrisy is not just reserved for those in a different tax bracket; it also applies to those who vote differently at the ballot box. Party has become arguably the most polarizing characteristic between people today. Charlie Kirk, for better or worse, exposed this characteristic, while also trying to break it down by hosting debates on campus and encouraging conversation among those who disagreed. The ethics and exact motivations behind it can be debated, but it is undeniable that this was a man who committed no crime but answer questions from a crowd. His assassination at Utah Valley University on September 10th, 2025, should have been a wakeup call. However, one year later, the date has been marked as the “Kirkaversary” by the Internet, commemorating it with parties and memes of him getting shot in the neck. Let me be perfectly clear: you do not, nor should you be expected to agree with everything or anything Charlie Kirk has ever said. Yet criticizing one’s politics is very different from celebrating one’s death. Writer Jonathan Turley writes in USA Today that “for college students, the rationalization of the killing of Charlie Kirk or a Brian Thompson is now a litmus test of your movement bona fides. I have heard exchanges where students identify with shooting suspect Tyler Robinson, who allegedly wrote, ‘I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk, and I took it.’” When asked about people who justified or celebrated her husband’s death, Kirk’s widow Erika did not reach for politics, she simply said “You think he deserved that? Tell that to my 3-year-old daughter.” It is a difficult line to argue with, but it is worth noting that it applies with equal force to Brian Thompson’s family just as it does Renee Good’s.
If we continue to go down the path of glorifying and excusing political violence, we only need to look at history to see where we are headed.
Solzhenitsyn was not writing specifically about America, but the system he described that had convinced millions of ordinary people that violence against the right kind of person was not only possible, but virtuous, still survives. But why? Many blame rhetorics such as Turley’s, who writes “For years, politicians, pundits and professors have fueled political rage by claiming that those with opposing views are seeking to end democracy, bring back the Confederacy or turn citizens into slaves of the oligarchs. Such apocalyptic claims give a sense of license to people to free
themselves from all social and moral constraints, allowing them to hate completely and unreservedly.” Others find the rhetoric explanation too convenient, Eli Lake in writing about Trump’s would-be assassins during his 2024 campaign writes that “Trump’s failed assassins are responsible for their own actions.” In this view, while the rhetoric may set the table, it does not pull the trigger. To me, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Rhetoric can absolutely dehumanize people into monsters to the point where violence starts to feel thinkable. However, it cannot by itself explain why so many people have turned to such binary and simplistic worldviews.
No matter how we got here it is undeniable that we have reached a watershed moment where society teeters on the knife edge of Chaos. If we continue to go down the path of glorifying and excusing political violence, we only need to look at history to see where we are headed. The late stages of the French revolution unleashed an outpour of bloodshed that started against the elites and aristocracy but soon turned to the people. Maximilien Robespierre would justify the slaughter, saying that violence was noble and mercy was weakness. “Terror is only justice: prompt, severe and inflexible,” he said. “It is then an emanation of virtue.” Turley calls this tendency for movements to turn on itself the Saturn Gene, because during “the French Revolution, journalist Jacques Mallet du Pan observed that ‘like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.’ It is an inexorable pattern where movements release long-suppressed rage only to destroy those who led the mob to collective acts of murder and mayhem.” John Adams put it best when he said, “There never was a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide,” and if we do not stop the bloodshed and demonization today, ours could be next.
Ross Yablans ‘29 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at r.e.yablans@wustl.edu.