The Oven Is Hot
Are you the kind of person who warns a child the oven is hot, then lets them touch it to learn the lesson? And when they burn themselves, you act shocked? That’s what I’m seeing right now in the aftermath of a very public assassination.
A man who spent his career demanding a world flooded with guns, hate, and fear finally touched the oven. And it burned.
Pacifism vs. Performance
Let’s be clear: I’m not glorifying murder. I’m not saying anyone deserves to die. But I am saying this — actions and consequences aren’t separate universes. You cannot demand a society awash in weapons, then clutch your pearls when one of them is turned back on you.
Here’s where the hypocrisy creeps in, people rushing to condemn the violence while proudly claiming pacifism. The mismatch between belief and action creates a pacifist identity that doesn’t resist oppression, it just makes people feel clean while staying complicit.
Violence Is Already Here
We live in a world built on violence:
- Bombs falling on Gaza.
- Drones crossing borders.
- Kids bleeding out in classrooms — 47 school shootings this year alone in the U.S. Nineteen dead. Seventy-seven injured.
Violence isn’t just guns and bombs. It’s anti-homeless benches designed to bruise bodies. It’s signs telling you where you can’t stand, sit, sleep, skate, or exist. Violence is the architecture of daily life.
So when someone insists all violence is unacceptable, but still pays taxes funding war, still benefits from the state’s monopoly on force, still complies with every violent structure of society - that isn’t pacifism. That’s performance.
The Hard Truth
If you are not willing to confront oppression with equal force, whether through literal resistance or disruptive systemic non-compliance, then you are not ending violence, you are just shifting who absorbs it.
Complacency is often more violent than direct action because it guarantees violence continues against the most vulnerable.
Stop Pretending
I’m not calling for chaos for its own sake. I’m saying stop pretending pacifism is moral superiority when it’s just complicity dressed as virtue. Real resistance means refusing to let violence stand uncontested. Sometimes that looks like disruption. Sometimes that looks like nonviolent defiance. And sometimes it looks like the oven burning exactly who kept insisting it wasn’t hot.
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