you don’t have to say something . . .

. . . about every terrible thing

(This is an excerpt from Nate Silvers Substack. We recommend that you read the whole piece.)

     Nearly every politics-adjacent Substack I subscribe to has had some extended comment on Charlie Kirk’s assassination, as have the podcasts I listen to, and so forth. But I have to be honest: the batting average for these stories has not been super high. In some instances, they’ve left me with a lower opinion of the author than I came in with. Many are just a little too self-conscious about defining the author's place in the moral and political pecking order, at triangulating precisely whose side one is on.

True, not covering a story is sometimes a sign that you think it deserves less attention. But there are other valid reasons for restraint, most importantly that you’re still processing the news or that you don’t have much to add at the moment beyond saying that what happened was terrible. Part of the value in not immediately commenting on every story is that you don’t establish a precedent where it becomes conspicuous when you sit one out.

You should also ask whether the instinct toward quick reaction can add fuel to the fire. Escalation into worse outcomes can be sort of an autoimmune response from overaggressive defense. Generally speaking, bad news happens quickly while good news happens slowly. Good news, in fact, is often just the absence of bad news: that the terrible thing that happened yesterday didn’t happen again.

In any sort of long-term relationship — with a spouse, or a coworker, or a friend — giving things time to settle down is an essential coping strategy. When people are on a knife-edge, even what you think are the most carefully-selected words can spark an adverse, fight-or-flight reaction and provide a rationalization to escalate. We wouldn’t survive for very long as a civilization if we didn’t provide for cooling-off periods. . . .