We have to say “Enough!” and have the courage to mean it
"Every time either side chooses to treat fellow Americans as enemies to be destroyed, it feeds the same permission structures that make violence feel inevitable."
The Recombobulation Area is a 19-time Milwaukee Press Club award-winning opinion column and online publication founded by longtime Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer. The Recombobulation Area is now part of Civic Media.
Scroll long enough after tragedy strikes and you’ll see it: the laughing emojis, gloating, insults flung at the dead. We see this predictable behavior each time we face unnecessary and unspeakable tragedy in this country — including the assassination of prominent conservative figure Charlie Kirk, the co-founder of Turning Point USA, at Utah Valley University, or the most recent school shootings at Evergreen High School in Colorado, which were occurring almost simultaneously this Wednesday, Sept. 10.
Less than 48 hours in, while we have seen examples of condolences or grief, too much of the discourse following Mr. Kirk’s death has amounted to points scored in an endless online game. We have reached a place where cruelty isn’t hidden anymore; it’s tallied in likes and reposts. And every time we watch this unfold, we see the consequences of a climate where rhetoric dehumanizes, divides, and normalizes harm.
This isn’t about one headline or one tragic event — it’s not about one more school shooting or the death of one man. It’s about the culture we’ve allowed to take root in America — one where words are sharpened into weapons, where faith is twisted into a political tool, and where our differences are framed not as disagreements to be argued, but as threats to be destroyed.
Listen closely to the language saturating our public life. Opponents aren’t just wrong — they’re “evil.” Neighbors aren’t simply different — they’re “radicals,” “aliens,” “thugs.” Leaders don’t lose elections; they’re victims of “godless conspiracies.” That language doesn’t just stay in speeches or on cable news. It seeps into school board meetings where parents shout across folding tables, into family dinners where arguments replace grace, even onto playgrounds where children learn to call each other names they don’t yet understand. Words meant to describe ideas start to stain people themselves. And when enough people are told, again and again, that their fellow citizens are enemies of God or enemies of the state, someone eventually decides to act as if that’s true.
That’s why we see tragedies like school shootings and political assassinations treated with selective outrage. When the victim is a conservative leader, it becomes a rallying cry. When the victims are children in a classroom, the noise fades into background chatter until the next shooting forces itself into the headlines. When the attacker can be tied to the “radical left,” it’s framed as proof of moral decay. If not, it’s written off as another “unexplainable tragedy.” Let’s be clear: we should be outraged about all of it. And that outrage should push us toward action — toward doing something, anything, to keep it from happening again.
And while violence is the most visible symptom, there are quieter consequences that permeate, too. Being on the receiving end of this rhetoric — hearing yourself or your community cast as invaders, traitors, or less than human — takes a toll. For people who are already vulnerable, it breeds fear and desperation. It erodes the sense that this country has room for them at all. And when you strip people of hope, when you tell them every day that they do not belong, the ground beneath all of us becomes more unstable.
That’s something I know from experience. When I was out knocking doors, I was called a socialist, a communist, even a traitor. I’ve been lumped in with this “radical left” more times than I can count. And the truth is, when I hear those words, I can’t help but take them personally. My life doesn’t look like that caricature. I’m a mom trying to raise good kids, a neighbor who wants to see her community thrive, someone who cares deeply about public schools and safe streets. But it’s not lost on me that the same thing happens in reverse. When people on my side use words like “deplorables,” “far-right,” or “extremists,” we may think we’re talking about politicians in power who are enacting damaging laws — but ordinary folks hear those words, too. They hear them and assume we mean them. When we say “radical left,” of course Betty sitting on her porch down the street who just wants to fund her public schools thinks you’re talking about her. When we say “far-right extremists,” of course John on his tractor, just trying to make it through another season, thinks that label is aimed at him. That’s what happens when our identities get so tangled up in politics — we stop separating policy from people. And in that confusion, good neighbors start to see each other as enemies.
And that’s where leadership matters most — because words from the top echo through every neighborhood. From the Oval Office Wednesday evening, President Trump called this a “dark moment for America,” blaming rhetoric from what he called the “radical left” as “directly responsible” for political violence. He promised to hunt down those who “contributed to this atrocity.” Instead of lowering the temperature, he raised it further. He pointed fingers, deepened divides, and cast blame squarely on one side of the aisle.
But here’s the thing: the hypocrisy could not be clearer. When Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota were violently murdered and attacked just months ago, there was no Oval Office address, no prime-time declaration that rhetoric matters. No vow to bring every contributor to justice. The silence then, compared to the outrage now, reveals the selective way violence is used in politics — condemn it when it suits your narrative, minimize or ignore it when it doesn’t.
That is why playing up a shooter’s identity or political affiliation only when it’s convenient is so abhorrent. Violence is violence. Political intimidation is political intimidation. The victims’ pain does not change depending on whether the attacker leaned left or right. Leaders who divide instead of heal make us all less safe, turning violence into political currency.
Imagine if the president had chosen differently. Imagine if he had said back in June and this week: This is a time to grieve, to pull together, and to reject violence in all its forms — no matter where it comes from, no matter who it targets. That is what leadership looks like when the temperature is rising: a steadying hand, not a fanning of flames. Words from the highest office in the land can either guide us back from the brink or shove us closer to it. And right now in America, we cannot afford leaders who mistake escalation for strength.
This moment demands clarity. We cannot shrug off violent rhetoric as “just politics.” We cannot stay silent while our neighbors are denied their humanity. And while it’s true that most of the loudest, dangerous rhetoric comes from the right, I'd be remiss if we didn't acknowledge that the left can fall into it, too. Dehumanization, no matter who uses it, corrodes our democracy. Every time either side chooses to treat fellow Americans as enemies to be destroyed, it feeds the same permission structures that make violence feel inevitable.
This is not about one man’s death or one movement’s rally. It is about the America we are building every day — in our schools, in our laws, in our churches, in our conversations.
It will take courage to confront this. Not the kind of courage that lashes out in anger, but the kind that refuses to dehumanize even when others do. Compassion is not weakness. Pluralism is not surrender. This kind of courage is strength — the strength our nation is desperate for. We must have the strength to say “enough” and to mean it.
Because the stakes are not abstract. They are the classrooms our children will sit in, the town squares where they will gather, the politics they will inherit. Whether they inherit a country where violence decides debates or one where differences can be resolved without fear or bloodshed depends on what we choose now. It’s time to demonstrate that courage.
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