Thread by @Scholars_Stage

There are several reasons why Charlie Kirk’s assassination will not create the sort of culture change dynamic as the George Floyd death in 2020.

Attempting to do so will likely be self defeating.

In politics the question is never “what is the right thing to do?” or “does this make me feel like I am doing justice.” Thr question is always “what can actually be accomplished and what will be the likely cost and consequences of accomplishing it?”

I don’t mean that in the squishy sense of norms or “don’t create tools the enemy will use against us” sense, though sometimes those are useful questions to think through.

I mean it in the sense I outlined in this essay, when I objected to our early course in Ukraine: scholars-stage.org/pausing-at-the…

When bad things happen there is always the overwhelmingly temptation to ACT—we *must* do something to show to ourselves that we are taking the crisis seriously, we must do something because it is the RIGHT THING TO DO.

In Mike Mazarr’s book on the invasion of Iraq, he calls this the logic of “imperatives” as placed against the logic of “consequences.”

In moments of crisis it is very easy for statesmen to think in terms of imperatives—on what MUST be done, not on a colder calculation of what can be done.

This is a general quirk or human psychology but I suspect that those of us on the right must be especially careful to guard against it, as we put so much stock in masculine virtues like strength, toughness, and dominance.

We will always face the temptation to do things that make us FEEL strong, tough-minded, and dominant but which do not actually accomplish what we hope they might. We will be tempted to choose short term feelings over long term strategy.

Which is not to say that anger should not motivate policy or inspire action. It should, and inevitably will.

But you have to step back and look at things coldly, almost as an outsider, to judge whether a policy or program or decision will actually do what is needed.

In 2020 we had the following conditions.

1. The entire population was cooped up in fear, anger or boredom because of the pandemic. Many lost their jobs and felt like they were experiencing cataclysm.

You simply don’t get what happened in 2020 at the mass level otherwise.

2. An activist movement that been heightening contradictions, mobilizing, and building out a narrative of victimhood had been campaigning for seven years. It took them seven years of constant agitation to get to 2020.

On top of that, of course, the median member of the creative and managerial classes is part of the left and this was disposed to sympathize with a need for a reckoning.

Control of the state does not compensate for lacking all of that.

If the state is used to try and compensate for all that, especially if what is done is not carefully thought out, will probably just alienate people who are otherwise sympathetic at this moment.

Sympathy of course is not the main purpose of policy—but if you are going to sacrifice it, you better be sure you will get something far better on the other side of the equation .