Ears Wide Shut
I was scrolling on TikTok on Tuesday (I set a timer giving myself 15 minutes a day — sometimes it works) and had just finished some of the usual fare (a woman moonwalking underwater to “Smooth Criminal”; the daily “chickens doing Dad jokes” post; a Cirque de Soleil performer, upside down, showing it is possible to give directions with your feet) when I was served up a live speech by Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who was talking to folks at the “2025 Eradicate Hate Global Summit” in Pittsburgh about the critical importance of finding a way to talk across political lines. When I tuned in, he was saying that, especially in the wake of the killing of Charlie Kirk, we needed to dial down the “rhetoric of rage” and find a way to listen to each other.
And that was as much as I could pay attention to. After a few seconds of him talking, the “comments” bar appeared on my screen and I watched as people text-screamed at each other in outrage.
While Josh Shapiro pressed people to listen to each other, online they just screamed at each other.
“The left is out for blood,” wrote someone going by the screen name of “Chase 212003ace.” “Charlie Kirk deserved that fully,” said “summersss02.” “Show me a lefty or transy who is doing something nice or something patriotic,” wrote “Mike Morales.” “Vote every Republican out immediately” wrote “Hummingbird.” Others were talking about Monday’s twin lynchings/suicides in Mississippi. Some appeared to be condemning Shapiro for being a Jew. Another group was taking advantage of the big audience and promoting random TikToks they had created – one apparently telling the story of the “ten greatest racehorses of all time.”
The comments were coming more than 1 per second, with emojis, all caps and exclamation points, and there was no way anyone online was listening to Shapiro. And what he was saying actually could have been relevant in the moment, since he himself survived an attempt to burn him and his family alive during Passover in April. Instead the speech running in the background became just another opportunity for people to shout past each other.
I scrolled away. The next video to come up in my “For You” feed was a live taping of the Charlie Kirk Show, where a similar text war was going on, with supporters trying to get members of their new fan club, selling t-shirts, praising Kirk as a Christian martyr, and opponents answering “Rest in Pi**”
There wasn’t much listening on the Charlie Kirk Show either.
I x’ed out of the app and sat down to write this. I’m really trying to make sense of what is going on in our politics these days, as we get angrier and angrier at the people we disagree with. I think I learned three things today from the experience.
We can’t listen because we are too busy talking.
My great Aunt Sue used to say that God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason. Most people today seem determined to prove that their ten fingers are more important than their two ears.
Why should you listen if you believe the folks on the other side are immoral, dishonest, closed-minded, unintelligent and lazy? Why listen if there is nothing anyone can say that will change your opinion? Why listen to someone who is trying to be thoughtful when it is so much more fun to perform your opinion?
When this is what you think about the other party, why would you listen to anything they say?
2. We can’t hear because our feeds won’t let us. Our social media algorithms take us to the places they know we want to go. If we like Republican red meat, we get fed a Paleo diet. Want a Democratic slant? Your algorithm can give you that too. If we aren’t on social media, we know how to accomplish the same thing. We choose Fox or MSNBC.
3. We can’t learn because we filter what we hear. Immediately after Charlie Kirk’s death, a friend of mine posted his opinion that “all the violence is on the left.” The President repeated that on September 14 (They were both incorrect. Predictably, someone has done the math on this. Over the past 50 years, according to Alex Nowrasteh of the right-leaning Cato Institute, there have been 114 politically-motivated murders by people with traditionally conservative believes and 49 murderers with traditionally liberal beliefs. Over the past 10 years, the “score” is 27 right-wing identified killers to 17 left-wing identified killers).
But the debate online wasn’t about score-keeping; it was about score-settling. The right-leaning folks could only see the Kirk murder was by someone with (apparently) left-leaning beliefs; the left-leaning folks posting online could only see the Colorado school shooting (literally one minute before Kirk’s murder) and the murder of Minnesota Democrat Rep. Kathy Hortman in June, both (apparently) carried out by right-leaning killers.
This past Monday, David French quoted this observation from a colleague from the National Review, Michael Brendan Dougherty:
“When my opponents do something wrong, that’s emblematic.” said Dougherty. It reveals a universal truth about my opponents – they’re all like that. “When my allies do something wrong, that’s exceptional.” We explain it away as “one bad apple.”
We make excuses for news that contradicts our side and make generalizations about news that convicts the other side.
I went back just now to read what Josh Shapiro actually had to say about our current situation.
“No one party is immune from political violence,” Shapiro wrote in a post on X on Monday. My family and I can attest to that. Using the rhetoric of rage and calling some of our fellow Americans ‘scum’ — no matter how profound our differences — only creates more division and makes it harder to heal.”
And here’s an excerpt from the transcript of the Shapiro speech I was trying to listen to on Tuesday:
“Leaders have a responsibility to speak and act with moral clarity – and as I have made clear each and every time, this type of violence has no place in our society, regardless of what motivates it, who pulls the trigger, who throws the molotov cocktail, or who wields the weapon.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s coming from one side or the other, directed at one party or another, or one person or another. It is all wrong – and it makes us all less safe.
“During moments like these, we must be clear and unequivocal and call out all forms of political violence as wrong.
“That shouldn’t be hard to do. Unfortunately, some – from the dark corners of the internet all the way to the Oval Office – want to cherry pick which instances of political violence they want to condemn. Doing so only further divides us and makes it harder to heal.”
Of course it’s also harder to heal if we enjoy hurting more.
-Leslie
Notes:
Timing of Utah, Colorado killings: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/13/gun-violence-charlie-kirk-colorado-school-shooting
David French column on political violence: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/opinion/charlie-kirk-assassination-ideology.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
President Trump on source of political violence: https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1967359769603449320
Summary of political murders since 1975 by political orientation of killer:
https://www.alexnowrasteh.com/p/deadly-politically-motivated-violence
Gun violence deaths in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States
Gov. Shapiro post on X on September 14: https://x.com/GovernorShapiro/status/1967399740418498912
Gov. Shapiro comments at Eradicate Hate summit: https://www.wgal.com/article/pa-gov-josh-shapiro-political-violence-speech/66121694