Murder on Main Street

This week, there was a brief news story about a man being murdered in broad daylight, in front of a crowd of people, for his expressions of speech. Then, the story just faded away.

Yes, actually it did. Because I’m not talking about that murder. I’m talking about a murder on Main Street, thousands of miles from Utah, in Crossville, Tennessee. A murder that I would argue is even more emblematic of where we are politically as a country right now, and that demands as much thought and analysis as the one the media can’t stop talking about.

Albert Sturgill, Jr., was the type of guy many of us know from our own hometowns across the country. You’ll probably understand what I mean when I say that, on August 22nd, he was conducting one of his usual activities: pacing back and forth alone in front of the Cumberland County Veterans Memorial muttering to himself and sporadically flipping his middle finger at the monument.

Something Sturgill was well known for in the community.

Only this time, for whatever reason, rather than leaving him alone, some passers-by decided to stop and teach him a lesson in patriotism.

The first, Eric Garrison, apparently felt particularly disrespected and compelled to engage Sturgill because – while neither he, nor his father, nor his grandfather had ever served – his great-grandfather had gotten a purple heart in World War II…

As Garrison lectured Sturgill on respect and how “these people died for you,” a second man jumped in and began cursing angrily at Sturgill. Sturgill, for his part, according to Garrison’s wife, didn’t respond.

As the crowd grew, Garrison, the second man, and a third began closing in on Sturgill. When he was closer, Garrison noticed that Sturgill had a “stick” tied to his waist, ran around behind him, and tried to take it from him.

Sturgill, a 62 year old disabled man with a prosthetic foot, finally responded by struggling with the 42 year old Garrison to keep possession of his walking aid. Which he ultimately retained by yanking it back and hitting Garrison over the head with it.

Video footage, according to NBC news, shows Sturgill backing up from the three men and waving his arms while Garrison, now incensed, runs off camera back to his car, grabs a firearm, returns– with his wife physically clinging to him and trying to hold him back and stop him–and shoots Sturgill at point blank range. Police sirens approach in the background and the three men just walk away, leaving Sturgill lying there to bleed out.

Larry Doster, a Vietnam veteran who owns the shop across the street summarized it like this: “I don’t care what he was doing. He didn’t deserve to be shot. He had every right to object to whatever he wanted to, even though I don’t agree with it.”

This, of course, is the great irony of the situation. And even the murderer, Garrison, recognized it. According to Garrison’s wife, Garrison started the confrontation with the words: “I know this is a free country. I know you have freedom of speech, but what you’re doing is wrong. These people died for you.”

Garrison knew, in his heart, that the men who were memorialized at that monument died for Sturgill’s right to free speech, and that he, Garrison, was doing wrong by trying to stifle it. But he did it anyway.

Because, right now, for many in our country like Garrison, symbols of freedom have become more important than freedom itself.

The substance of things no longer matters to them. They have embraced a new spirit of symbolic freedom in lieu of the foundational freedoms our country was founded on— even when the two directly contradict one another.

You can see that every day in our politics. In the lore of our country, when rights were more important than symbols of those rights, the prize of winning in politics was the opportunity to manage the country and make decisions about the best way forward. Who those decisions were best for, or whether they were good or bad decisions, was always up for debate, but the people in charge were at least nominally “managing” things.

But management isn’t sexy and it doesn’t get you TV coverage or clicks. So in the last decade of hyper-charged attention and social media, and perhaps even as a direct result of earlier mismanagement by those we trusted, many people and politicians have accepted a new end goal of politics: winning itself.

And, with the media profiting over every single play and churning out 24/7 coverage, every day has become a new game in the never-ending season of politics.

It might sound cynical, but what we are seeing right now is what happens when politics is reduced to winning and losing.

A few days ago, a friend of mine asked me if I thought the murder of Charlie Kirk was “a professional hit.” Another friend asked me a similar question the day of the UnitedHealthcare murder, which I consider a political killing.

My answer for both the Kirk and UnitedHealthcare murders was that no, I didn’t think they were “professional” hits (which was subsequently confirmed in both cases).

First of all, I don’t think there’s such a thing as professional hits like most people imagine from the movies. There aren’t legions of professional murderers for hire running around and, if there were, they wouldn’t be doing it with firearms from rooftops in broad daylight.

Furthermore, what we are witnessing right now isn’t refined. It’s a symptom of this dark win-at-all-costs political era woven with division, fear, anger, inequality, and desperation. In that mess, motivated individuals, inspired by their beliefs, or perhaps just by the belief that they are irrelevant, feel compelled to jump headlong into America’s newest blood sport.

There are dozens of articles recapping last year’s political violence, mentioning things like the presidential assassination attempts, state lawmaker murders in Minnesota, firebombing of the governor’s house in Pennsylvania, a Tesla truck firework bomb set ablaze, shootings at campaign offices and the CDC, the list goes on.

We’ve all seen how crazy fans get at football games. Imagine if, just for a second, fans had the opportunity do more than just yell, but actually get into the game and impact whether their team would “win” that day. How many of the 80,000 roaring Sunday afternoon football fans would push a secret button under their seat if it meant that it would take out one of the opposing team’s players? How many would push that same button to kill an opposing player?

It only takes one.

And with politics in America raging every single day, all day, and millions and millions of fans who have much more on the line than who wins or loses on a Sunday afternoon, it’s no surprise that things keep happening.

Particularly because this change in atmosphere has twisted people’s minds and reduced other people to one of two things: teammates or opponents.

All of the quotes I’ve read about Charlie Kirk’s killer were some variation of the line that he had “only recently become involved in politics.” What more impactful way was there for him to contribute to his new team, whether it was right v. right or something else, than to take out what he considered an opposing player?

Looking back, I don’t think that Eric Garrison killed Albert Sturgill Jr. because he was flipping off the veterans memorial. I suspect that Garrison killed him because he was ashamed that he’d gotten his red-blooded-9-line-t-shirt-wearing-faux-patriot-ass whooped by a crazy old crippled man in front of a crowd of people.

But he started the fight by revealing how twisted his mind was: acknowledging that Sturgill had a right to free speech, but trying to silence him anyway. And he ultimately didn’t blink at killing him, despite his wife clinging to him and pleading with him to stop, because in his mind Sturgill wasn’t another person, but an opponent.

The question is, what do we do now?

I see at least two ways to approach an atmosphere like this: by recruiting more people to your team, or by changing the paradigm. And while I don’t think they are mutually exclusive, the first strategy would have to be carefully coordinated in order to maintain the latter.

I, for one, want to do both, and am curious what you all think— so please let me know in the comments.

My goal is to start exploring tangible things we can do in the next few weeks. In the meantime, if you’d like to read more about a time when we faced a similar situation and came out of it — an era when a Congressman was murdered, on average, every 7 years, and two presidents were assassinated — you can check out my earlier Substack “On the Brink of Anarchy,” or just the excerpt below.

Thank you for reading and supporting, and please share with anyone you think might find it interesting!

-Lucas

EXCERPT FROM ON THE BRINK OF ANARCHY

In the late 1800’s wealth inequality was skyrocketing, workers were organizing for power against an elite profit-maximizing class, and political polarization was at a zenith. As a result, people caught political fever, and it became contentious. Check out how familiar this description of the late 1800’s sounds:

“Such public politics became, in the words of one comedian, “our great American game.” Political rancor grew precipitously. Saloons resounded with heated debates. On train cars, Americans took straw polls to see how strangers would vote. At dinner tables, families bonded—or broke up—debating an upcoming race. Even when exhausted Americans threw down their newspapers, they looked up only to find partisan broadsides slathered on every wall. “Ignorance is bliss now,” complained one woman as she canceled her political newspapers, weary of the whole spectacle.”

Did you know that the highest sustained participation in elections, something we are seeing a surge in right now, was actually during the late 1800’s?

Elections were also closer than ever before. No president in this period came to office by winning a majority of the popular vote.

At the same time, workers who were tired of being abused started fighting for an 8 hour work week. Anarchism and “propaganda of the deed,” like what Mangione and Livelsberger did, proliferated.

And some of them even became martyrs, like Mangione and Livelsberger appear to aspire to. For example, in 1886 Chicago, “a rally at Haymarket Square was organized by labor radicals (note: their word, and one often chosen by those who take more than their share to label those who want a fair piece of it) to protest the killing and wounding of several workers by the Chicago police during a strike the day before at the McCormick Reaper Works.”

When police arrived at the rally to disperse the crowd, someone threw a bomb at the officers. Mayhem ensued, and in “August 1886, eight men labeled as anarchists were convicted in a sensational and controversial trial in which the jury was considered to be biased and no solid evidence was presented linking the defendants to the bombing.”

Most were hanged, but they are remembered, and despite being called anarchists, they are not remembered in a bad light. Quite the opposite, in fact. There is a memorial to them standing in Chicago today that is listed on the National Parks Service website.

Political violence was everywhere during this time. On average, a sitting US Congressman was murdered every seven years. Two presidents were assassinated, in 1881 and 1901.

We are there again. Multiple assassination attempts on a (former) President and presidential candidate. Propaganda of the deed proliferating with Mangione and Livelsberger. And political polarization and doubts in democracy everywhere.

Have you heard someone say that democracy is failing because people are stupid? (Come on, you’ve probably thought that yourself) Or that dumb and uneducated people have more children than smart people so we are doomed?

Here is a quote from an 1878 treatise on the failure of democracy by Francis Parkman, an elite of the era, bemoaning the growing democratic power of the lower classes:

“It is aggravated by the fact, generally acknowledged "by those most competent to judge of it,” that intellectual development and high civilization are not favorable to fecundity, so that the unintelligent classes, except when in actual destitution, multiply faster than those above them. Thus the power of ignorance tends to increase, or rather the power of the knaves who are always at hand to use it.”

Jon Grinspan, of the National Museum of American History, whose article I quoted a couple of times above, lists even more similarites:

“Others attacked the rising immigration rates, like Francis Willard, the leader of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, who blamed America’s out-of-control politics on “alien illiterates.” Others still aimed (more accurate) attacks at railroads, corporations, robber barons and lobbyists who seemed to be buying up America. The muckraking reporter Henry Demarest Lloyd wrote that “liberty produces wealth, and wealth destroys liberty.”

So how did this era end and is there anything we can learn from it?

According to Jon, the political and voting fervor began to die down as those in charge stifled voting access in order to decrease turnout. Which, you can see in the turnout chart above, appears to have had the intended result.

At the same time, however, labor unions started winning 8 hour workdays left and right, antitrust laws were passed and enforced, and a feeling of fairness started to return the country. In short, normal people started getting results and maybe weren’t as interested in politics anymore.

So, if we want to move on from this, and not fall into twenty years of political strife and violence, perhaps the best way to do that is to make things fair again. To get big money out of politics and government, to pass laws so that insurance companies can’t reject bionic arms for little girls, and otherwise bring a sense of fairness back to America.