America Has The Bends

The Bends, Radiohead

Table of Contents

• Where to even begin?

• Strategic response

• Kansas implications

• A personal note about the Minnesota shootings

Where to even begin?

A couple days ago, family living in the vicinity of Whiteman Air Force Base messaged us to let us know they saw B2 bombers flying away. A short while later, 12 bunker-buster bombs dropped from B2s and a wave of Tomahawk cruise missiles descended on Iran. If you’ve ever attended a sports event in the region, you’ve probably had an opportunity to observe these massive black wedges float across the stadium sky as a patriotic projection of strength; today, we’re reminded of their purpose.

In the past two weeks, we’ve seen the National Guard deployed in LA and a nationwide protest (estimated at over 2% of the population) and a new war between Israel and Iran and the first-ever military use of 360,000 pounds of bunker-busting bombs dropped by the US Air Force on nuclear sites in Iran. It’s a heady moment. It’s also, somehow, still a polarizing moment; DC Republicans have quickly embraced all of this and DC Democrats continue to flop around looking for an effective way to protest or obstruct any of it.

All of it matters. All of it will have consequences.

I’m reminded of the weeks and months immediately following the 9/11 attacks where terrorists crashed commercial jetliners into the World Trade Center. (Yes, it’s been long enough ago that there are voters with no living memory of this!) Those were days of national unity (behind George W. Bush!) and global alliance. But many fearful years followed, and the Patriot Act; from one angle, you could argue that the terrorists won. We still have the Patriot Act, and American culture and global leadership has been permanently damaged in the decades that followed.

I’m not a journalist, and that’s not what this newsletter is about. I’m reminded, however, of repeated conversations while canvassing during my campaign last year for Kansas Senate where I’d meet someone with sincere concerns about voting for Sharice Davids (D) because of her less-than-full-throated opposition to the Israeli razing of Gaza. These are sincere people, often with family ties to the region, whose families felt at risk. I don’t know that I was successful in persuading any of them that a vote for Harris would be a safer vote—a more peaceful vote—than a vote for Trump. But it’s hard to take that sort of long view when you’re in an immediate crisis.

Strategic response

Since the beginning of this newsletter, I’ve always argued that strategy matters more than tactics in this moment. There’s a whole lot of “strategy talk” going on all over the place right now, as people with power wade into game theory. What will the Iranians do? What will Russia do? What will Israel do? How will the US respond to X or Y or Z?

Our world has become like a deep-sea diver, rapidly soaring to the surface from stable and higher-pressure depths. If Trump is a chaos agent of change, then each action and policy is one more nitrogen bubble in the blood, trying to find its way into the open air. But the gas is trapped within us; human bodies can only tolerate so much before the bends kick in. Societies and nations are no different.

Not since the 60’s have we experienced so much political violence. In five years, Americans witnessed the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy; political conventions became riots; the National Guard shot 4 students at Kent State. Today, we are seeing:

• Political leaders and elected officials assassinated or targeted.

• National protests with real ideological divides over the role of government, immigration, and civil rights.

• A sitting president leaning into militarized displays of power and threatening (or invoking) emergency powers.

• Polarization so deep that even basic facts—like whether an action is constitutional—are disputed across party lines.

Today, however, everything is faster and more globalized. The bubbles rise faster.

Kansas implications

Kansas finds itself at an uneasy crossroads as international conflict and domestic strife test the state’s politics. The coming months will likely see heightened political debate—hawks vs. skeptics on the Iran confrontation, hardliners vs. moderates on handling protests—as candidates gear up for the pivotal 2026 elections. But net-net, conflict with Iran probably plays well with Kansas’ conservative base voters. It will be challenging to find a non-Trumpian message that speaks to the moment.

We can expect campaigns colored by these events: Republicans arguing that strength and order must be upheld in chaotic times, and Democrats contending that democracy and the rule of law are paramount to safety. Meanwhile, on the ground, officials are implementing new security measures to protect public servants and citizens alike.

A personal note about the Minnesota shootings

I need to return for a moment to the assassinations a week ago of two Democratic state legislators in Minnesota. While I’m not a legislator, I did make an attempt, and I’ve come to call many of our Kansas elected officials personal friends through that experience. I know many had become numb to the random online harassment and threats that come with being in the public eye. They don’t have security details, unless you’re perhaps at the state executive or federal level. They don’t generally think of themselves as a “target,” they’re just a person like anyone else.

During my campaign, I had a couple of threats made at me that seemed like troll performance theater at the time. I carry those memories differently now. America has lost its way on how to maintain consequences for gun violence, and it’s metastasizing across all spheres of society.

For all of our elected officials (including the ones whose ideals and behaviors run counter to mine), stay safe. There’s more risk in your work than you bargained for, more than anyone deserves. But as you take actions to protect yourselves from these dangers, please consider also taking actions to protect the rest of society from gun violence.