Eyes Wide Shut

To suggest September 10, 2025 as the moment we should finally “sense a disturbance in the Force” is telling. To recognize the fracture in our civil society only now, after the tragic killing of Minnesota public servants and countless acts of violence toward Jewish citizens and school children, demonstrates the problem. The warning signs started long ago and treating them as isolated instead of systemic has allowed them to deepen.

The disturbance should have been evident when a sitting president incited an insurrection against the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. That was not an ambiguous episode but rather a violent attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. The fact that this individual was subsequently reelected and then pardoned those who engaged in that very violence, underscores how tolerance for anti-democratic behavior has grown. These were the moments that shook our foundations of stability.

Barbara F. Walter, a leading scholar of civil conflict, has emphasized that the most reliable warning signs of civil war are not spontaneous outbreaks of violence but long-developing conditions: intense polarization, leaders who exploit crises to undermine institutions, and political actors who shift away from democratic competition toward coercion. In her view, Donald Trump’s rhetoric and actions are advancing precisely these dynamics by stoking grievances, eroding trust in institutions, and normalizing political violence.

The world is on fire. And it burns hotter because America’s shining city on a hill has dimmed. Democracy’s guardrails cannot hold on their own; they endure only when citizens open their eyes, recognize the threats, and stand together to resist them.