Fight rising political violence — by calling out victim culture

There was a time in America when political violence provoked near-universal horror and condemnation.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan was a deeply polarizing figure — but when he was shot, his surgeon famously said, “Today, Mr. President, we are all Republicans.”

That principle is fading, as we saw last month after the murder of Charlie Kirk.

In a Manhattan store, I overheard a customer discussing that news: “I agree he was evil, but I do not think he could’ve been shot by anyone more evil.”

“Trump will get worse now,” the cashier replied.

Their tone was casual, as if they were talking about the weather.

Both seemed to accept that violence can be excused if it targets the “right” enemy — and that’s more dangerous than any one attack.

It’s a mindset I see regularly in my psychotherapy practice.

A patient might describe a boss as “toxic” or an ex as “evil,” and suddenly the fantasy emerges: If only this person were gone, life would be better.

Healthy therapy pushes back. Unhealthy therapy nods along.

Our politics increasingly resembles the unhealthy version — rewarding grievance instead of challenging it, and validating rage instead of cooling it down.

After the assassination attempt against Donald Trump in 2024, some of my patients admitted disappointment he survived.

“It would’ve spared us the next four years,” one told me bluntly.

Another said she felt “cheated” the shooter missed.

And what was most unsettling to me was both patients’ expectation I would agree.

This mindset is not unique to one side. Once opponents are cast as evil rather than wrong, violence begins to feel justified.

The politically divided responses to Kirk’s assassination and the attempts on Trump’s life prove we have gone from unity to justification — a dangerous shift.

Therapy has drifted in the same direction. Too often it validates grievance rather than build resilience.

For the unstable, violence is grievance taken to the extreme.

The media has reinforced this drift. After Kirk’s murder, his killer was painted in oddly sympathetic terms.

His texts discussing the crime were called “touching,” while Kirk himself was recast as a symbol of hate.

Words like these do not just describe events, they shape how people think. When killers are romanticized and victims demonized, moral lines blur.

Violence begins to look less like crime and more like justice.

This trend should worry every American. If violence is tolerated as long as it targets the “other side,” the principles that protect us all collapse.

How to solve it? Laws and policies matter, but culture matters more.

We need leaders who stop modeling grievance, media that refuses to romanticize killers, and citizens who resist when violence is justified.

That’s where redirection comes in.

In therapy, when a patient says someone “deserved” to die, I do not let it pass; I make them hear themselves by turning the comment around as a direct question.

If a patient tells me, “Trump deserved to be shot,” I’ll stop them and ask: “So you believe a political disagreement justifies killing?” 

When patients hear their own words reframed this way, the exaggeration that felt casual suddenly sounds grotesque, forcing them to confront the dangerous logic behind their anger. 

It’s an uncomfortable exchange, but the discomfort can spark clarity — and help patients begin to shed fragility and victimhood.

We can do the same in our daily lives.

If a friend jokes about a politician “getting what’s coming,” don’t laugh along. Ask: “Do you really mean that?”

If a family member shrugs off an attack because the victim is from the other party, press them: “So you think violence is OK if it’s someone you disagree with?”

The time for avoiding awkward conversations is over.

Politeness and looking the other way may feel safer, but silence lets dangerous ideas fester.

That relative or colleague whose rhetoric you dismiss as harmless may one day become the person who acts on it.

Supporters who wink at violence and extremists who carry it out are linked by the same sentiment, and that sentiment has to be challenged.

These small confrontations reassert a moral boundary that has to hold.

America has faced bitter divisions before. But through wars, impeachments and assassinations, there was still a shared sense that political violence was wrong.

That consensus is fraying.

It is time to restore a cultural line that should never have moved: No matter who the target is, violence is never acceptable.

Not excused. Not softened.

If we cannot hold that line, we lose more than lives.

We lose the very idea of America as a place where we fight our battles with ballots and debate, not bullets and hate.

Jonathan Alpert, a psychotherapist practicing in New York City and Washington, DC, is author of the forthcoming book “Therapy Nation.” X: @Jonathan Alpert