“I think the human race needs to think more about killing, about conflict. Is that what we want in this 21st Century?”

 – Robert McNamara, The Fog of War (2003)

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“How careful should we be, that we do not mistake the impressions of gloom and melancholy, for the dictates of reason and truth. How careful, lest borne away by a torrent of passion, we make shipwreck of conscience.”

 – John Adams (November 29, 1770)

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“We’ll see you at your house. We’ll murder you,” the young woman threatened the Bakersfield City Council. “The entire nation is coming for you. And we will stop, at no end, until you are in the ground. You’re a traitor to this nation,” said the man’s voicemail left for the Arizona Secretary of State. “I hope they kill your children,” shouted the murdered child’s relative at their alleged killer in a Houston courtroom. Gay people should be “lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head,” preached the Texan pastor. “Yes I do, I support genocide. I support killing all you guys, how about that?” the campus safety officer told a group of protesters at CUNY.

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I’ve been thinking for a while about how people determine when violence is acceptable. For that reason certain news stories jump out to me, particularly those close to home in the increasingly angry United States. I don’t have all the answers, but I think that within many (or most?) of us is a something akin to a black box of violence, when anger reaches a point that people feel compelled to threaten, harm, or even kill. As Lincoln wrote: “Blood grows hot, and blood is spilled.” Yet how this all operates under the hood is somewhat nebulous, and I think people have their own idiosyncratic formula for what makes their blood “hot” and what they decide to do about it. The hope is that bringing these subconscious inclinations closer to the surface might give us a better understanding, and possibly control, over them.

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