We are flirting in this country with the darkest and most serious kind of civic disaster: the disaster of political violence. Not only the shameful and deadly fiasco in the Capitol building on January 6, but the merciless parade of arson, defacement, and slaughter that tore through our cities in the summer of 2020: these are like the first thunderclouds that pass over the air before a storm. If the storm comes, it will be the ruin of us all.
