In 2025 alone, the United States has seen the following acts of political violence:
- Rightwing Activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated.
- Minnesota Democratic State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were assassinated. The assassin also attempted to kill Minnesota State Senator John Hoffmann and his wife, Yvette.
- Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s house was set ablaze by an arsonist while he and his family were inside.
- An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer was shot outside a detention facility in Texas. At least 12 people were arrested in connection with the assassination attempt.
- The New Mexico Republican Party Headquarters was set on fire by an arsonist.
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was attacked by a mass shooter, who murdered Police Officer David Rose.
- At a “March For The Hostages” in Colorado, civilian Karen Diamond, aged 82, was murdered by a firebomber.
- Jewish couple and low-level Israeli Embassy staffers Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were assassinated in Washington, D.C.
- UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Johnson was assassinated in New York.
Notice I did not name the perpetrators of the violence here. Nor did I delve into their political ideologies. This choice was made intentionally to keep the focus on the victims.
It was also made because, while Left Wing and Right Wing circles battle it out to see which “side” has become the most hateful and violent, both are so busy trying to point the finger at the other and absolve themselves, that they are perpetuating the very hate and division that got us here.
Hate and division got us here. Vengeance got us here.
They’re not going to get us out.
And I, for one, want out.
For much of my life, I was a person filled with hate and resentment. My childhood was really tough, and some of that abuse was carried on by people I met in adulthood. It made me bitter, jaded, wary, angry, resentful, judgmental, vengeful.
Intellectually I knew this wasn’t healthy, so I did reach out for help. When I did, the therapists and books and faith practices and gurus all pretty much recommended the same thing:
“The remedy for hate and bitterness is love, compassion, and forgiveness.”
I balked at it every time.
To me, love, compassion, and forgiveness felt like giving a Get Out Of Jail Free Card to everyone who’d ever hurt me. It meant the monsters got no karmic jail time for their crimes, and I wasn’t having it. Show love, compassion, and forgiveness to people who never afforded me any of the above?
Nope.
My anger was “righteous” and justified, and I wasn’t about to put it down. For anyone.
Time passed, and I extended this “righteous” anger mindset to politicians who, I felt, were hurting people through words and policy. From my vantage, these “bad” politicians were doing measurable harm to many, and my resentment and hate grew to such a fever pitch that, to quote a common parlance, “I wouldn’t spit on them if they were on fire.”
Day after day was spent in an endless cycle of rage, defiance, and despair at what “they” were doing. And I wasn’t one of those “just complain about it on social media” people – I was a woman of action — writing my local leaders, writing to news outlets, attending rallies, speaking up ad nauseum, and using sleepless nights to think of ways in which to turn the terrible tide of awful that “they” were ushering in.
In time, each and every one of my days was being entirely derailed by something “they” did… and yet “they” carried on with their lives, oblivious to my pain.
The flames of my anger weren’t touching “them,” but they were burning me alive.
Something had to change.
During one of my “seek out therapists and books and faith practices and gurus” phases, I regularly attended guided meditation at a Buddhist monastery in Atlanta. They often led us in what is called a Compassion Meditation, wherein you work to build compassion for every aspect of creation.
You start “easy” – sending love and compassion to your family and friends (ostensibly a task you already do with some regularity). Then you build to “medium” – sending love and compassion to the world as a whole (in the abstract, Bette Midler, “From A Distance” kind of way). Lastly, level “hard” – sending love and compassion to those who have wronged you. “Them.” The folks you wouldn’t spit on if they were on fire.
Oof.
I’m neither a Buddhist, nor an accomplished meditator, but my failure to ever even attempt the hard level had nothing to do with either of those caveats. I couldn’t do the hard thing because hate was more important to me than healing.
My rage was “righteous”: I was “good” and they were “bad” and someone needed to be punished . When and if punishment was handed down? Then and only then would I be ok. Then and only then would I consider forgiveness.
In other words: my healing was dependent on their suffering.
Y’all: please sit with that for a minute. Please.
Because, friends, if your healing is dependent upon “them” suffering? That’s not love or forgiveness or healing. That’s vengeance. And vengeance corrodes the vessel it’s carried in.
Vengeance seeks external punishments to solve internal problems. Vengeance preys on your feelings of powerlessness, and tells you that your power, and your absolution, lies in punishing another person.
Spiritually, vengeance is a recipe for soul-corrosion. Politically, it is a recipe for violence.
Vengeance, and the violence it engenders, are born from pain.
So many of us are in pain.
We’ve been hurt, and manipulated, and disregarded, and mistreated, and told that we – our families, our needs, our beliefs – don’t matter or worse: that they are worthy of ridicule and scorn.
Some souls let those feelings consume them, and vengeful violence is the result. Violence against the self, or violence against other people. Violence wrapped in the cloak of righteous indignation. Violence whose only appeasement must be made in fire and blood.
And Vengeance is never sated.
The USA is already on fire.
Time is critical, and you must choose: will you seek the compassion necessary to douse the flames and staunch the bleeding? Or will you burn it all down in your “righteous” vengeance, even if you get charred to unrecognizability in the process?
Will you continue to sacrifice everything you say you love on the altar of anger, however “justified”?
I won’t.
I can’t.
Vengeance is never sated. But Compassion offers satiety. Love offers satiety. Forgiveness offers satiety.
And my soul seeks to be sated.
I don’t want vengeance anymore. I want compassion, love, forgiveness. I want to achieve that Hard Level on the Compassion Meditation.
I want to see the humanity in my fellow man, and not make the status of my soul contingent upon his actions. Because if I refuse to spit on him when he is on fire, that is not a reflection of his lack of righteousness: it’s a reflection of my lack of righteousness.
And I refuse to let my soul go down in flames.
Whereas I was once a person consumed with “righteous” anger and resentment, I have spent the last year or so actively cultivating compassion.
I’m working on my Compassion Meditation Practice, and can tell you, with very real tears in my eyes, that I’ve worked my way up to sending people I’d otherwise like to smack up to five whole seconds of unconditional love and compassion. (Still working on forgiveness.)
Five seconds may not sound like a lot, but in those five seconds, everything changes.
In those five seconds, I take my power back. In those five seconds, I no longer need the apology, or the behavior change in order for me to heal. In those five seconds I release my corrosive rage and douse the fire.
My douse is still small. It’s still Spit most days, but I’m working up to Water Bucket Level. (Maybe one day I will reach Firehose or Firefighter level. Fingers crossed.)
Regardless, when the smoke clears, what stands before me is not an enemy, but a flawed person who has experienced their own traumas and pains, and been twisted by them, as I have.
In those fleeting five seconds, I can finally see the power of compassion: that what happens now is not contingent upon what “they” did, but upon what I choose to do. Now.
The USA is on fire.
And I choose to run for the water bucket.
