This comment is for Saagar, I hope he reads it. I want to say that I am sympathetic to your feeling of vulnerability in this moment, and that I hope it spurs you to think about the way that political violence, both retail and wholesale, features in your present worldview.

I am moved by your level emotion around your colleague's murder. I do want to take the opportunity to say: take a moment to reflect on the way that you feel vulnerable right now, and keep that in mind when you think about other people in our society who are vulnerable in your future news punditry. Just as you are looking over your shoulder wondering whether you'll be targeted by someone for your ideology, there are millions of people in this country who live like that every day of their lives because of their race, religion, mother language, gender identity, etc. Many of those people see a figure like Kirk as having actively stirred hatred and encouraged violence -- whether retail violence akin to Kirk's own murder or the type of wholesale violence perpetrated by the likes of ICE today or the FBI in Americans mosques in the early 2000s.

So what's the point in my asking you to stew over the fate of these unfortunates in our society? I want you to understand and for it to be reflected in your political commentary that reactionary violence is an inevitable consequence to the type of political project that Kirk was engaged in. Even if it's futile, people will violently resist when they're backed into a corner. It should be an expected outcome that immigrants, trans people, or whoever comes in the crosshairs will embrace violent resistance as a tactic to try to hold on as long as they can in the face of an existential threat to their lives and livelihoods. In our society, the capacity for retail violence is fairly high. Maybe you think that a reactionary political project can win out via the application of overwhelming force and then back down off of that ledge once we've purified our society, but I think you're smarter than that. The level of state violence required is such that the society will be permanently transformed. If you look at that violence and decide that it's not worth it, how does that impact the range of political solutions you would prescribe for our country's many serious problems? Does it change how you feel about illegal immigrants if you assume that the citizens of this country will have to enact terrible violence and have that violence enacted upon us to achieve a vision of mass deportations?

Your commentary on cancel culture and the value of policing discourse in polite society was interesting, but it feels like it was hashing out the same culture war issues that we wrangled with in the first Trump era and never resolved. I would encourage you to look elsewhere other than a culture war discourse for the answer on how to ensure freedom in our society for marginal beliefs. If, for example, 50% of US workers were unionized, how would that impact the question of spurious firings over culture war issues? How would it change your view on collectively policing what is considered decent or indecent conduct if decisions impacting working class peoples' livelihoods were made in a democratic, collective way instead of being dictated by executives?

I'll be honest: I don't have any tears to shed for Charlie Kirk. I'm a Muslim with a leftist (not liberal: leftist) ideology, and I have no doubts what he would say about my death if I were murdered. I wouldn't say that I am across the board against political violence in all situations -- I think that's very naive -- but I don't agree with this act of political violence or this type of political violence.

I hope to hear you explore these ideas in the future. Once again, I feel for you and the fear you're experiencing right now. I hope that you will learn from it, and that we'll all be better for it.