Politics is a proxy for violence. In ages past, disputes and disagreements between differing factions in a society were settled by violence. Roman senators tried to reclaim the Empire by murdering Julius Caesar, England devolved into civil war as parliamentarian forces tried to forcibly end the reign of King Charles I, French radicals like Maximilien Robespierre slaughtered thousands in an attempt to reshape the government of France, Bolshevik rebels butchered Tsar Nicholas II and his family before plunging Russia into decades of terror and genocide, and the Irish Republican Army deployed guerilla warfare tactics and terrorist actions against the British in an effort to reclaim the Emerald Isle.

In the United States, violence as a political vehicle is largely a distant memory, if even that. The Civil War ended 160 years ago and, since then, both Democrats and Republicans have largely made efforts to resolve their differences not by the sword or the bayonet but by the ballot box and the debate stage. There is little doubt that Theodore Roosevelt disagreed with the policies and positions of his Democratic opponent Alton B. Parker in the 1904 election, but the two never came to blows over their disagreements. Wendell Wilkie vehemently opposed many of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidential actions — both before and while campaigning against Roosevelt for the White House — but never threatened Roosevelt’s life. Even in the 21st century, while Barack Obama and his flunky Joe Biden hurled accusations of racism and Nazism against bland, moderate Republicans like John McCain and Mitt Romney, death threats were not on the table.

Things took a turn in 2016, when the contest between Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, a former first lady, senator, and secretary of State, and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, a real estate mogul and reality television personality with no political experience, polarized the nation. While violence was never outright threatened, Clinton openly disparaged and dehumanized Trump’s supporters, calling them a “basket of deplorables.”

Once the “deplorables” propelled Trump to the White House, the dehumanizing rhetoric intensified. Trump was smeared as a “racist,” a “misogynist,” a “homophobe,” a “xenophobe,” and even a “fascist.” His political allies and supporters were subjected to similar treatment. A self-styled comedienne even posed, covered in blood, holding up a fake decapitated head resembling the president’s. After nearly a decade of political opponents labeling Trump a reincarnated “Hitler” and his supporters “Nazis,” Trump was shot in the side of the head at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. A few months later, he survived another assassination attempt, this time at a golf course in Florida, all while his political opponents continued to declare him an existential “threat to democracy.”

Then the “deplorables” sent Trump back to the White House, this time armed with both an electoral college and popular vote victory and flanked by a Republican-led Senate and House of Representatives. Things seemed brighter than before: Trump’s signature red “Make America Great Again” hats were worn in public, celebrities and pop stars gladly celebrated the president’s reelection, and Trump administration officials made the rounds on talk shows and political programs touting the president’s policies.

But the lights went out again on September 10, 2025. Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old husband and father, a devout Christian, and a conservative activist responsible for founding and running the influential Turning Point USA organization, was shot in the throat and bled to death almost instantly while hosting a TPUSA event on a college campus in Utah. In the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s murder, dysgenic left-wing degenerates began populating social media with praise and celebration, declaring the slain Kirk a Nazi and wishing that Hell were real so that he might be burning there for all eternity.

That moment should have been a wake-up call to many conservatives. The right-wing comedian and sometime-political philosopher Sam Hyde once warned, “When we win, do not forget that these people want you broke, dead, your kids raped and brainwashed, and they think it’s funny.” For a moment, the murder of Charlie Kirk seemed to prove Hyde’s warning prescient. But the moment passed, as moments do, and conservatives lapsed into the comfortable, familiar habits of asking, “Wow, can you imagine if the roles were reversed? Can you imagine if a right-wing extremist had killed a popular Democratic Party-aligned public speaker?” No. No one can imagine that. Why? Because it hasn’t happened. The rowdiest that right-wingers have gotten in recent years was at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and the only death that resulted was the death of Ashli Babbitt, a Trump voter who was shot and killed by a U.S. Capitol Police officer.

But conservatives cannot rest. The old routine of imagining if the roles were reversed, of both-sides-ism, of desperately hoping that our political opponents are not really as bad as we suspect, deep down, has been shattered again. On Tuesday, Virginia voters elected Democrat and former state legislator Jay Jones as Old Dominion’s next attorney general. Jones, of course, became the subject of controversy last month when text messages he had sent to a Republican House of Delegates colleague in 2022 were published. In those text messages, Jones repeatedly described murdering then-Speaker of the House of Delegates Todd Gilbert, a Republican. “Gilbert gets two bullets to the head,” Jones quipped, adding that if his Republican colleagues “die before me I will go to their funerals to piss on their graves.” When the Republican he was texting pressed Jones on his comments, he did not cower or recant his violent fantasy. He doubled down and added that Gilbert’s children should also be shot and killed. “I mean do I think Todd and Jennifer are evil? And that they’re breeding little fascists? Yes.”

Obviously, Jones’s comments were and are reprehensible, and a number of his fellow Democrats admitted as much. Those same Democrats, however, not only refused to suggest that Jones suspend his campaign, they continued to endorse him. What is even more disturbing is that over 1.7 million Virginians still voted for Jones as the state’s new attorney general. “Oh, but early voting had been ongoing for weeks before those text messages were published, and Democrats often vote early,” the conservative observer might reason, clinging to his withering hope that his political enemies can’t possibly be that bad. “Maybe Jones wouldn’t have won if people who voted early had seen those text messages. They could have changed their minds.” Oh, but they did see those text messages, and even those who hadn’t wouldn’t have changed their minds.

A Roanoke College poll published days before the election found that 80% of Virginians were familiar with the text message scandal. Of those who had already cast an early ballot for Jones, only one percent said that they would have changed their vote after learning about the text messages. According to exit polls from Tuesday, 27% of voters said that Jones’s violent text message fantasies and death-wishing was “concerning, but not disqualifying,” while another 10% said that their candidate discussing the murder of a political opponent and his children was “not a reason for concern.”

Conservatives must reckon with a harsh new reality: some of your political opponents want you dead, or at best simply don’t care if you’re dead. Gone are the days when both Democrats and Republicans agreed on what was best for the nation but had differing opinions on how to achieve that outcome. Conservatives now face a world in which many political opponents have jettisoned any pretense to “safe, legal, and rare,” and openly clamor for the slaughter of innocent unborn children as a good in and of itself. Progressives preach that “diversity is our strength” and that “no person is illegal,” and if American women are raped and murdered as a result, that’s a small price to pay for multiculturalism, isn’t it? (When an illegal immigrant attempted to rape 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley, she fought for her life. After he strangled her and beat her head with a stone, he was identified via the flesh he left under her fingernails. When 37-year-old Rachel Morin attempted to fight back against the illegal immigrant who was raping her, he repeatedly bashed her head open against a wall and then continued raping her as she bled to death.) Now, as Republicans are denouncing political violence following the assassination of one of their brightest minds, Democrats are voting for a man who threatened to kill Republicans and their children, whom he deemed “little fascists.”

Politics is a proxy for violence, but only so long as the two differing factions trying to share society agree to use that proxy. The past several years, capped off by Tuesday night’s election results, demonstrate that one of the two factions in American politics is no longer interested in a proxy. Recent polls have demonstrated that Americans are increasingly concerned that political violence will continue rising. Electing a man who called for the murder of a husband and father just because he’s a Republican, less than two months after the murder of another husband and father just because he’s a Republican, would suggest that those fears are well-founded.

Conservatives can no longer afford to abide by the political rules of the 1960s, nor even of the 1980s. Those days are over. The Democratic Party is no longer run by well-meaning proto-progressives trying to engineer an end to segregation or empower women in the workforce. It is now, seemingly, run on one principle and one principle only: stop Nazis at any cost. It just so happens, though, that if you’re a conservative, you meet the Left’s qualifications for “Nazi.” Policy papers are no longer of any use, nor is constantly crying, “But wait! I’m not a Nazi!” Your political opponents don’t care. Charlie Kirk was not a Nazi — he literally devoted his entire adult life to free speech and open debate, always handing his political opponents a microphone and a platform to voice their views — and he was shot and killed, and his death was celebrated by the same people to whom he handed a microphone.

No, conservatives must learn that fighting not to lose is a losing strategy, while fighting to win is a winning strategy. The political enemy of today is fighting to win, and fighting not to lose, to simply be left alone, will not do. It is not enough to cast a ballot for Trump and sit back and relax for the next four years. Things will not just sort themselves out. It is time for conservatives to stop playing defense and go on the offensive: register voters, turn out low-propensity voters, motivate the base that sent Trump back to the White House, instead of trying to win over demographics that will never vote red anyway. If conservatives don’t fight now — with voter registration forms and ballot boxes, with mass deportations and an immunity to emotion-driven propaganda, with an iron will and a heart on fire for virtue — then their children will have to fight — with different and deadlier weapons.

Politics is a proxy for violence. Conservatives must make the most of using that proxy.