When Violence Replaces Words - Tom LoBianco Reports, Ep. 13
The murder of Charlie Kirk and the new normal of America's dark moment
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Welcome to the 13th episode of Tom LoBianco Reports, a new show from 24sight News and our friends at Political Voices Network. Monday through Friday, tune in here on Substack at Noon ET and then catch the replay at 8p ET at Political Voices Network.
Each weekday, I’ll bring you along as I report the story. Along with my friend and colleague Ian B. Walters, we’ll dive down the late-night, screen-glazed rabbit hole of the modern interwebs, acting as your personal guide to what’s real and what’s complete bullshit. (For our live viewers at noon, reply to this email or send in your comments in the live chat and we’ll get to them at the end of the show.)
On today’s show:
The Wages of Violence
How bad is this moment? I’ve read a more than dozen different nut grafs this morning on using guns to settle political scores.
The nut graf (paragraph) is supposed to bring the reader up to speed on whatever the big story is. Government shutdown? Tell us about the last one or two. Trump vs. Biden? Tell us about their last race.
A political murder?
Increasingly that’s taking more than a nut graf to bring the reader up to speed.
Conservative leader Charlie Kirk was murdered Wednesday in Utah by someone. (We assume this is political in nature because of who Kirk was, but it is possible there was some other motive. The shooter is not yet captured. And we are still learning how this happened.)
That follows, three months after a Christian right extremist assassinated a Democratic politician and her husband in Minnesota.
Four months after two staffers from the Israeli embassy were murdered in Washington by a Palestinian activist.
A year after two assassination attempts on the Republican nominee for president.
Almost five years after the January 6th attack on the Capitol, in which extremist militia leaders stashed guns across the Potomac River with plans to violently take the U.S. Capitol.
And on and on.
The Epoch of Rage and Exhaustion
In Biblical terms, an epoch is meant to delineate a historic period of human history, of God’s plans for humanity. In the secular world, America’s epochs have stretched from our birth in war to a national divorce in war, a reunification in cold war and more.
Now we’re in America’s epoch of rage, a historic period of online trolling metastasizing into real world violence. But also a period of exhaustion, of regular folks exhausted by enraged politics, cellphone-fueled division by algorithm, and the rhetorical and physical violence that has replaced America’s formerly genteel politics of the post-war epoch.
The Responsibility of the Megaphone
The murder of Charlie Kirk was replayed endlessly on the world’s biggest media platforms, including X.com. An assassination played on a loop to endless engagement.
I watched it, it was traumatic.
This was not Nicolas Cage in snuff-film horror movie “8mm”, this is our modern media diet.
24 years ago on the former dominant media platforms, America and the world watched another horror film in real time as well: 9/11.
What happens now is not on Fox News or MSNBC, or Elon Musk or Larry Ellison, or even the president of the United States.
It’s on us.
“People show who they are in moments of crisis,” said
, the sage producer of this show. “What the situation calls for grown-ups, we need grown-ups.”What’s Next
We’re still planning Friday’s show, stay here for more.
Catch up
Did you miss Wednesday’s show? Watch it here! The first five Senate races to watch in 2026, counted down.
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