September 11th Eve was another of all-too-often dismal days. Within minutes, Charlie Kirk was shot and killed and a sixteen-year-old student at Evergreen HS wounded two fellow students in a rampage before turning the gun on himself. Due to the school’s lockdown protocols, fortunately no others were wounded. Physically. Mentally and emotionally, the surviving students along with the Utah Valley University students joined the ever-widening ranks of those who’ve survived similar mass shootings and are scarred for life.
There are further casualties beyond the human toll. Like how Macbeth “murders sleep” when he commits regicide as King Duncan sleeps, those who express their madness by shooting young people in an academic environment are attempting to murder learning and the free exchange of ideas. That compounds their cowardice, making them and their acts more heinous.
After such tragedies, we often learn in short order the what and how of the shooter did what he did and eventually the why. Most often, I find the proffered explanations unsatisfactory. We ofttimes learn the shooter had been “radicalized” by accessing ugly, horrific online sites with anger-filled rants and screeds that display hideous, gruesome images and promote violence. But that doesn’t answer the ultimate why: Why did he get to the point where he believed the answers to whatever problem or conundrum he faced could only be found in the dark recesses of the internet? It’s like descending into a rat-infested sewer to find the cure for heart disease.
A corollary to George Santayana’s famous dictum that those who don’t learn from the past are condemned to repeat it is that answers to many problems can often be found in the past. Because when it comes to human behavior, there’s nothing new under the sun. We still deal with the same passions that people in ancient times dealt with. And we’re still uplifted by the same noble desires as they.
That means it’s incumbent upon citizens in a democracy to study their country’s history in particular and the world’s more broadly. If they did, they’d discover ugliness against their fellow citizens—e.g., tarring and feathering, lynchings, and terrorizing immigrants, like the Know Nothings did especially to Catholics during the 1840s and 1850s—is part of our history. We belie ourselves when we try to whitewash the sordidness of our past because the ugliness of our current version is rooted in and a continuation of it, albeit with the twist of today’s being inflamed digitally.
During particularly dark stretches however, it’s important not forget the noble side of fellow Americans, which eclipses the ignoble by lightyears. Consider all the little acts, intentional and unintentional, you both perform and witness on a routine basis. Simple acts like waiting your turn, saying thank you, being neighborly, holding a door, and even risking your life to save another. I suspect when performing them you don’t ask if the beneficiary holds the same political or religious perspectives and beliefs as you.
So when I hear someone say after a horrific event, “That’s not who we are,” I tend to agree. But I do add a caveat: That’s who we’d become—the lower angels of our nature—if we don’t step back from the precipice.
No platitudes or uplifting words can assuage my anger after a school shooting, but Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s helped.
“We can return violence with violence,” he said. “We can return hate with hate, and that’s the problem with political violence—is it metastasizes. Because we can always point the finger at the other side. And at some point, we have to find an off-ramp, or it’s going to get much, much worse.”
Cox said he didn’t want to get “too preachy,” but as one who rolls his eyes at preachiness, I didn’t find his words sanctimonious in the least. In fact, they were direct affirmations about the state of affairs in America today.
“I think it’s important that we,” he said, “with eyes wide-open, understand what is happening in our country today.”
Cox made a salient point about social media being a cancer, urging everyone to “log off, turn off, touch grass, hug a family member, go out and do good in your community.” By doing so, maybe we could “find a way to lower the political temperature in a deeply fraught moment.”
Amen, brother, I thought. You’re echoing Abraham Lincoln’s challenge to Americans of the Civil War era to rise to the better angels of their nature.
Imagine Old Abe podcasting from the dais on the American pantheon encouraging us not to descend to our worse proclivities but instead to rise to the better angels of our nature. It is, after all, a timeless reminder that’s worth repeating. Over and over and over.
Recommended Listening: Spencer Cox Wants to Pull Our Politics Back From the Brink (Ezra Klein interview. If you’re not a NYT subscriber, I might be able to gift you a free listen. Email me asap as I’m limited on the number.)
Glenn Blanco
September 25, 2025 at 5:00 pmIt is hard to believe the with the nine levels of angels in heaven, we can’t get out of this mess.
“ Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.”
John F. Kennedy