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If this is your first Z-Pack, welcome - I'm Zach.

⬇️ Let’s get it.

🎯EVERYBODY CALM DOWN

If you’re not careful, moments like the assassination attempt on Trump will have you feeling like everything is falling apart.

Don’t fall for it!

This is a good time to take a step back and remember that we always feel like we’re living in the craziest of times - but we’re not!

Just look at how nuts the 1970s were in America with this story on presidential assassination and airline hijackings 👇

Imagine - two different crazy ladies tried to assassinate the President TWICE in ONE month! And on top of that, people used to FREQUENTLY hijack planes.

And then you have bombings — in 1971 and 1972 alone, the FBI recorded approximately 2,500 bombings on American soil.

We’re talking the whole smorgasbord: pipe bombs, bombing houses, bombing government buildings, etc.

AND, this doesn’t even touch on other major historical moments going on before in the 60s: the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam war, rise of counterculture (sex, drugs, anti-war) and feminism (birth control and contraception, abortion), the rise of the environmental movement, etc.

Imagine if social media had been around at that time with all the girlies saying “omg so tired of living in historical moments”

So, my main points I’m trying to get across are
(1) we’ve been through MUCH worse violence during MUCH worse social and economic conditions, and
(2) social unrest is actually cooling down recently

To my second point (citing from economist Noah Smith’s post):

• Crime is at near record lows

• There are no major protest movements going on, especially at the level of George Floyd protests

• Americans aren’t into as much political news anymore because we’re TIRED from the 2010s.

On top of this, Americans are doing pretty damn well financially, so there’s no material desperation either.

Now, does this mean no other bad things will happen, like this assassination attempt? No, of course not.

But are they getting worse than ever and may break us? Hell no. We’ve been through worse — world wars, depressions, civil war, crazy high murder rates, etc.

Back to the assassination attempt on Trump: a more conservative friend of mine argued with me the other day on how, as a leftist, why would you NOT resort to violence to stop Trump, if he’s as big of a threat to our country as the left says he is?

I’ll close with my answer, from a great passage by writer Jeremiah Johnson:

“‘But if Trump’s going to play dirty, shouldn’t we resist? You want us to fight a fascist with peace and love?’”

It sounds ridiculous, at first glance, to continue respecting all the norms while your opponent plays dirty. It makes liberalism seem like a limp-wristed, weak-willed philosophy unable to defend itself.

To this argument, I can only point to history. History is filled with genocidal empires, vicious authoritarians, fascists, communists, and evil madmen of all shapes and sizes. Somehow every one of them ends up losing to liberalism in the long run. Europe’s colonial empires all dissolved. Nazi fascism was defeated. Soviet communism was defeated. Monarchy, excepting a few remaining countries, now only exists as a quaint tourist attraction. Liberalism’s track record over the past 300 years is extraordinary.

Liberal democracy is so dominant worldwide that even brutal dictators like Vladimir Putin feel the need to at least pretend at having free democratic elections. Really consider that - the majority of dictators worldwide go through the trouble of staging fake elections. It’s because even Putin knows deep down that the only legitimate form of government is liberal democracy, and that he needs to at least pretend to respect those norms…

Trump’s rejection of liberal values is why he shouldn’t be considered for public office. But it’s not a reason for you to abandon your own liberal values, not a reason to attempt assassination. If you assassinate Trump, you’ve surrendered your philosophy. You’ve admitted he was right all along to call for violence. In a real sense you’ve become Trump. Going down that road only leads in a single direction, towards an all-against-all war.”

Thanks for taking the Pack, and don’t forget about the 🔥 tweets at the bottom,

Zach

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