I know you don’t generally do “emergency podcasts“, and perhaps this actually wasn’t one, and was just coincidental. If it WAS an 🚨 episode, I’m so glad you did it. If it wasn’t, please consider doing them for situations like this.
I’m on the left, and I absolutely despised Charlie Kirk and his role in politics. But this is horrible, and has truly shaken me today. I’m absolutely sick over this. I have to say, though, it actually heartened me to see the political commentators on the left that I follow condemn this. Unfortunately, the comment sections are depressing. At least they are the “too online” left and not the normal people. And thankfully, the prominent figures on the right who are using this moment to “wage war” on the left — as Jesse Watters put it on his broadcast — are the loony right like Laura Loomer, Mike Cernovich, Jesse Waters, and Elon Musk. Unfortunately though, those loonies have influence in the current administration. I really hope the reasonable and influential people on both sides finally step up for once and help to change things.
I’m always optimistic. But man this is a horrible, horrible chapter. (Sorry this was so long, but it’s really kind of fucking with me.)
Love you guys, and all of these wonderful fucking people in the Fifdom.
Extremely timely discussion, gents, and as edifying as always. I can’t say I’ve followed Charlie Kirk’s work closely (because I love the more nuanced, moderate takes one gets from sources like TFC), but his murder feels like a tragedy that will leave a deep and possibly unhealable wound on our society - on top, of course, of the terrible personal loss for his family and friends. Living out here in a rural corner of the country, I’m used to national events feeling far away. This one doesn’t. It has me more worried than ever for our nation’s future.
The timing of this episode was indescribably serendipitous. It was worth the entire year's subscription fee to have access to a sane, reasonable, humane conversation to counterbalance (maybe even supplant) all the reactionary bile being spewed online today. Thank you.
Now we are killing the messenger rather than the message. Attacking the person not just ideas. Back to the 1960s and early 70s. No one deserves to die over opinions. This was the actual violence ... kids, not some uncomfortable views or perspectives. Sad.
This whole event has been awful. I did not know or listen to Charlie Kirk but I did know of him. Plainly, he got assassinated because someone disagreed with his opinions. That is horrifying. The Matthew Dowd’s of the world can lay whatever bullshit disgusting rational they want over it, but it is idiots and crazy people screaming at the sky. He got murdered because someone disagreed with his opinions. This has shaken me more than I think Trump if he were to have gotten killed. Trump I can comprehend. He’s an enormous political figure. He’s the lead candidate of an opposition party. That fits in with history and justification for horrible things that I’ve seen thousands of times. It’s seeing the world as a chess board and someone putting Trump in as the king. Remove the king and you win. I can wrap my head around that. Kirk was a 31 (I’m 32) year old with a 3 year old and a 1 year old literally sitting in front of people asking them to disagree and discuss topics with him. And someone murdered him for it. It truly feels like a step over a precipice into the abyss and I do not know how we climb back out. In the last 24hrs I have had friends (democrats in Chicago) let me know that they changed their clothing because they were wearing a brand that they thought someone might confuse with being right-wing and didn’t know if there are just crazy people out there shooting anyone they believe to be the *enemy*. This is insanity.
And I know it isn’t helpful but I need to say it. The left wing does have a violence or murder problem. And, I in no way believe violence and murder is a problem for one side. Where I see the violence and murder problem is the left-wing (I.e. Matthew Dowd) consistently provides rational and foundation to their sides violence. Even when condemning the violence they cannot help themselves from saying “Kirk a divisive figure on the right” or more abstractly “the shooter/assailant had a life long struggle with X, Y, Z and saw the victim as contributing to that” or some other nonsense.
The right certainly has some of this. The Luigi murder showed some of that. And, certainly you can find thousands of examples on X and Reddit and the like. However, the left has it throughout mainstream reporting. From the NYT to CNN to MSNBC to the Atlantic to everywhere else. When there is a murder I consistently seen the murderers actions framed and rationalized and provided *context* in a way I do not see on the right to anywhere a similar degree. No one is just evil. No one just made evil decisions. No action is completely horrific. There is a reason and a rational and we have to spend effort understanding where they were coming from. From the trans murderers. To Trump getting shot. To ICE shootings. To Kirk. “You have to understand their struggles with bigotry”, “he’s a divisive person”, “but the Trump administration is using ICE to deport people”, etc.
Providing that foundation to the murder justifies the murder. It cannot ever be left at this is an outright terrible person who did an outright evil thing.
I cannot stand that type of reporting. Maybe I am ignorant and blind to it in the mainstream on the right. Who the fuck knows anymore. But I constantly see it on the left and it drives me fucking nuts.
To the final point on the lefts issue with violence, so far I’ve seen both GLAAD, Ilhan Omar and Medhi Hassan all quite clearly say in public statements that Kirk had it coming to him.
To be clear, that is to me in the wake of his assassination variations of “he spread hateful rhetoric that endangered at-risk communities”.
That more appropriately framed is “he had opinions we disagreed with”. The entire structure there is lending support for violence and I believe (at least with these 3) they 100% understand it. It is equating speech with violence or “endangering” communities. Which if someone is being violent, you have the right to defend yourself, therefore lending the foundational support structure to these occurrences.
If anyone else has instances of this same phenomenon let me know:
“Friends, I will disown and repudiate any man of my party who attacks with such foul slander and abuse any opponent of any other party; and now I wish to say seriously to all the daily newspapers, to the Republicans, the Democrat, and Socialist parties, that they cannot, month in month out and year in and year out, make the kind of untruthful, of bitter assault that they have made and not expect that brutal, violent natures, or brutal and violent characters, especially when the brutality is accompanied by a not very strong mind; they cannot expect that such natures will be unaffected by it.” - Theodore Roosevelt, October 14, 1912
I'm 60% of the way through the episode and paused to reply to a late night/early morning e-mail I received from a student. (I am the [unqualified] advisor to the student political union at a high school.) The young man who wrote me is the kind of whip-smart, thoughtful, politically engaged young person who gives you hope that the next generation might possibly include amazing people and leaders. At a school that is overwhelmingly progressive, I honestly don't know this kid's politics because he is so open-minded. In the e-mail I just replied to, he wrote, "I would say [Charlie Kirk's] videos reveal that he was a relatively respectful guy, but I have heard varying opinions. I’d be curious to know what your impression of him is. I have been surprised to hear him characterized as evil by some of my friends."
You guys in general and this episode in particular prompted the response pasted below from me. Due to the episode, I feel better prepared to be a constructive presence at today's impromptu lunch-time meeting sponsored by the political union. Thank you.
----------------------
One of the reasons I don’t know [Kirk] well is that he is clearly partisan. I don’t think that is a bad thing, but I don’t really care to listen to partisans of any stripe. I prefer to spend my time listening to smart people who reason consistently from first principles, instead of working backwards from desired conclusions. I don’t think the latter makes you a bad person or a bad actor, but it does make you less interesting to me personally. I was pleased that my favorite podcast dropped an episode late last night. I’m in the middle of listening to it now. I have gleaned many ideas that apply to someone who wonders, “What should someone who is worried about political violence do now?” Spoiler: one of those things is *not* to explain away any type of violence by suggesting that the victim had it coming. The podcast distinguishes the good-faith quest to understand the context of violence from the attribution of a monocausal explanation for why something happens. For example, in the late 90’s, was it reasonable to say that the heavy footprint/actions of the United States in the Middle East increased the size of the target on America’s back – and that it is a factor when we consider why people want to commit acts of terrorism against the United States? Yes, that reasoning is totally normal and true. But, on September 12, 2001, it was not normal, and it was not true to say, “*This* is why this happened.”
Looking forward to the meeting. Hope you got some sleep last night!
-Jon
p.s. From what I’ve read and looked at so far, he strikes me as a decent guy with whom I disagree on several important issues.
Here, here Kmele. The story is that a schizophrenic man that has been arrested (and released) multiple times , attacked a 23 year old woman coming back from her job at a pizza shop. What does the man’s race have to do with it? The right is playing the same freaking game that the left has. It’s tragic regardless of the amount of melanin in the perpetrator’s or victim’s skin. The issue is that violent, mentally ill people, who should be in mental institutions are running loose on our streets.
Totally agree. The coverage I’ve seen has been saying “but if he was white and the victim was black, the left would have been all over it”. That’s exactly why the right shouldn’t be making it about race, not doing the exact same thing.
Yes but they’re calling out the hypocrisy of it all, which needs to happen. The (rather leftist) media has been race baiting for years and is largely responsible for all the 2020 bullshit. And it has to fit the Narrative. People are frustrated at the double standard.
Yeah we tried that colorblind shit. The left manifestly doesn't want it. If my races and more importantly my kids race is going to constantly be used against me, you bet damn sure I want other people's races front and center when there are patterns in their shitty behavior. I have eyes and a brain.
I can see patterns. Race as used in the US is stupid, but it is used everywhere and with great crudeness. A giant cudgel. Expecting a group of people getting beat with a cudgel all their life to not pick it up when it falls at their feet is asinine.
I guess that’s fine if you want an endless cycle of everyone just pointing out hypocrisy, then doing the exact thing they criticise the other side for, etc etc.
At some point someone has to actually just do the thing they think is right, if it’s wrong to be obsessed with race, then stop being obsessed with race. What alternative is there?
I have a good friend of 20+ years who is employed as an English professor at a UC school. Dating back to our time at undergrad he has always been proudly and vocally Marxist, and we've had fun over the years ribbing each other and the fact that we disagree about nearly everything politically. This has never once gotten in the way of our friendship.
When he publicly (at least, on IG) danced on the grave of Brian Thompson, I said nothing.
When he publicly danced on the grave of Wesley LePatner (BREIT CEO), I said nothing.
Now that he's doing the same following the murder of Charlie Kirk, I will say something... I'm just not sure that today or even tomorrow is the right time to do it.
This is an educator of young people. He is a father. But to be honest he is also a person I now find morally repugnant and not someone I want to associate with anymore, and given our history this makes me profoundly sad.
I was at work when a good friend of mine came in and showed me a picture on instagram that a friend of his drew, it was a caricature of charlie kirk shot in the neck. And my friend was pretty gleeful about it, he was pretty gleeful about the whole thing. I hear a lot of stuff like this from some people at work, and I’ve done a pretty good job of just being sort of blasé about these types of things, like “oh ha ha man yeah thats great,” even though I am tempted to give the lecture of “violence never solves anything and this is horrible”. But I just didn’t do that, and more and more I’ve become better at just kind of shrugging this kind of thing off even though I am absolutely disgusted by it. I don’t know if it’s negative to kind of give up on that, or I just don’t want to say another thing that will fall on deaf ears by pointing out the hypocrisy of it all and make potential enemies out of people who are misguided about this (or whatever) to say the least. I’m just shocked above all at left leaning people who are jumping up and down gloating about this when I consider myself to be such a liberal and come from that background. I mean I’m just so shocked. Everyone’s principles just went out the window at some point, and it feels like it happened so quickly.
Why weren’t you brave, why didn’t you call bullshit on a person being gleeful of a caricature of a murder? That is the easiest thing in the world to condemn.
No, it is, and thats a fair question. I remember telling the same people how shitty luigi mangione was, and I remember even condemning the trump shootings both times. I’ve told the same people the same things more than once, and I know how they feel. They have made up their mind about political violence for people they disfavor. I know they hear me, but their feelings lie where they are. There’s a time and a place, and more often than not, the better thing to do is listen and maybe maybe every once in a while you get to get a point in- but thats it.
I'd like to thank you three tremendously for this. I've been growing more an more disillusioned by most political analysis, including yours at times, but this was a sobering reminder that there are very few people willing to actually grapple with where America is at right now. I'm naturally an optimist, but these past few months have been trying for me. I've been working on building a deeper understanding of American cultural history, but have been continuously distracted by the endless noise. Knowing that there are still people like Michael, Kmele, and Matt that can cut through the bullshit, is heartening. Luckily, I've seen enough good from the response to remain optimistic, even if the near future is bleak. It's just enough to continue learning, thinking, and hoping. If not for my life, but for my children's.
Love you boys. Thanks for being the light at the end of the insane tunnel in which we live in. 🙏
I know you don’t generally do “emergency podcasts“, and perhaps this actually wasn’t one, and was just coincidental. If it WAS an 🚨 episode, I’m so glad you did it. If it wasn’t, please consider doing them for situations like this.
I’m on the left, and I absolutely despised Charlie Kirk and his role in politics. But this is horrible, and has truly shaken me today. I’m absolutely sick over this. I have to say, though, it actually heartened me to see the political commentators on the left that I follow condemn this. Unfortunately, the comment sections are depressing. At least they are the “too online” left and not the normal people. And thankfully, the prominent figures on the right who are using this moment to “wage war” on the left — as Jesse Watters put it on his broadcast — are the loony right like Laura Loomer, Mike Cernovich, Jesse Waters, and Elon Musk. Unfortunately though, those loonies have influence in the current administration. I really hope the reasonable and influential people on both sides finally step up for once and help to change things.
I’m always optimistic. But man this is a horrible, horrible chapter. (Sorry this was so long, but it’s really kind of fucking with me.)
Love you guys, and all of these wonderful fucking people in the Fifdom.
Thanks for talking about this, guys. I’m sick about the whole situation.
Every time something like this happens, I'm reminded that Matt has been warning about this for years.
Just awful.
Extremely timely discussion, gents, and as edifying as always. I can’t say I’ve followed Charlie Kirk’s work closely (because I love the more nuanced, moderate takes one gets from sources like TFC), but his murder feels like a tragedy that will leave a deep and possibly unhealable wound on our society - on top, of course, of the terrible personal loss for his family and friends. Living out here in a rural corner of the country, I’m used to national events feeling far away. This one doesn’t. It has me more worried than ever for our nation’s future.
The timing of this episode was indescribably serendipitous. It was worth the entire year's subscription fee to have access to a sane, reasonable, humane conversation to counterbalance (maybe even supplant) all the reactionary bile being spewed online today. Thank you.
Now we are killing the messenger rather than the message. Attacking the person not just ideas. Back to the 1960s and early 70s. No one deserves to die over opinions. This was the actual violence ... kids, not some uncomfortable views or perspectives. Sad.
This whole event has been awful. I did not know or listen to Charlie Kirk but I did know of him. Plainly, he got assassinated because someone disagreed with his opinions. That is horrifying. The Matthew Dowd’s of the world can lay whatever bullshit disgusting rational they want over it, but it is idiots and crazy people screaming at the sky. He got murdered because someone disagreed with his opinions. This has shaken me more than I think Trump if he were to have gotten killed. Trump I can comprehend. He’s an enormous political figure. He’s the lead candidate of an opposition party. That fits in with history and justification for horrible things that I’ve seen thousands of times. It’s seeing the world as a chess board and someone putting Trump in as the king. Remove the king and you win. I can wrap my head around that. Kirk was a 31 (I’m 32) year old with a 3 year old and a 1 year old literally sitting in front of people asking them to disagree and discuss topics with him. And someone murdered him for it. It truly feels like a step over a precipice into the abyss and I do not know how we climb back out. In the last 24hrs I have had friends (democrats in Chicago) let me know that they changed their clothing because they were wearing a brand that they thought someone might confuse with being right-wing and didn’t know if there are just crazy people out there shooting anyone they believe to be the *enemy*. This is insanity.
And I know it isn’t helpful but I need to say it. The left wing does have a violence or murder problem. And, I in no way believe violence and murder is a problem for one side. Where I see the violence and murder problem is the left-wing (I.e. Matthew Dowd) consistently provides rational and foundation to their sides violence. Even when condemning the violence they cannot help themselves from saying “Kirk a divisive figure on the right” or more abstractly “the shooter/assailant had a life long struggle with X, Y, Z and saw the victim as contributing to that” or some other nonsense.
The right certainly has some of this. The Luigi murder showed some of that. And, certainly you can find thousands of examples on X and Reddit and the like. However, the left has it throughout mainstream reporting. From the NYT to CNN to MSNBC to the Atlantic to everywhere else. When there is a murder I consistently seen the murderers actions framed and rationalized and provided *context* in a way I do not see on the right to anywhere a similar degree. No one is just evil. No one just made evil decisions. No action is completely horrific. There is a reason and a rational and we have to spend effort understanding where they were coming from. From the trans murderers. To Trump getting shot. To ICE shootings. To Kirk. “You have to understand their struggles with bigotry”, “he’s a divisive person”, “but the Trump administration is using ICE to deport people”, etc.
Providing that foundation to the murder justifies the murder. It cannot ever be left at this is an outright terrible person who did an outright evil thing.
I cannot stand that type of reporting. Maybe I am ignorant and blind to it in the mainstream on the right. Who the fuck knows anymore. But I constantly see it on the left and it drives me fucking nuts.
To the final point on the lefts issue with violence, so far I’ve seen both GLAAD, Ilhan Omar and Medhi Hassan all quite clearly say in public statements that Kirk had it coming to him.
To be clear, that is to me in the wake of his assassination variations of “he spread hateful rhetoric that endangered at-risk communities”.
That more appropriately framed is “he had opinions we disagreed with”. The entire structure there is lending support for violence and I believe (at least with these 3) they 100% understand it. It is equating speech with violence or “endangering” communities. Which if someone is being violent, you have the right to defend yourself, therefore lending the foundational support structure to these occurrences.
If anyone else has instances of this same phenomenon let me know:
- Medhi Hassan
- Ilhan Omar
- GLAAD
- Matthew Dowd
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/charlie-kirk-assassination-maga/tnamp/
Elizabeth Spiers.
“I don’t agree with murder, but here is an entire article justifying why someone would want to murder him”.
Welcome to being an awful evil person
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/13/opinion/charlie-kirk-debate-violence.html
Hasan Piker.
“Violence doesn’t exist in a vacuum, here’s why people would want to murder him”.
Least surprising addition ever.
I genuinely breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the alert for this on my phone. Thank you, lads.
Nothing more to say, but I know I'm in the right place.
“Friends, I will disown and repudiate any man of my party who attacks with such foul slander and abuse any opponent of any other party; and now I wish to say seriously to all the daily newspapers, to the Republicans, the Democrat, and Socialist parties, that they cannot, month in month out and year in and year out, make the kind of untruthful, of bitter assault that they have made and not expect that brutal, violent natures, or brutal and violent characters, especially when the brutality is accompanied by a not very strong mind; they cannot expect that such natures will be unaffected by it.” - Theodore Roosevelt, October 14, 1912
I'm 60% of the way through the episode and paused to reply to a late night/early morning e-mail I received from a student. (I am the [unqualified] advisor to the student political union at a high school.) The young man who wrote me is the kind of whip-smart, thoughtful, politically engaged young person who gives you hope that the next generation might possibly include amazing people and leaders. At a school that is overwhelmingly progressive, I honestly don't know this kid's politics because he is so open-minded. In the e-mail I just replied to, he wrote, "I would say [Charlie Kirk's] videos reveal that he was a relatively respectful guy, but I have heard varying opinions. I’d be curious to know what your impression of him is. I have been surprised to hear him characterized as evil by some of my friends."
You guys in general and this episode in particular prompted the response pasted below from me. Due to the episode, I feel better prepared to be a constructive presence at today's impromptu lunch-time meeting sponsored by the political union. Thank you.
----------------------
One of the reasons I don’t know [Kirk] well is that he is clearly partisan. I don’t think that is a bad thing, but I don’t really care to listen to partisans of any stripe. I prefer to spend my time listening to smart people who reason consistently from first principles, instead of working backwards from desired conclusions. I don’t think the latter makes you a bad person or a bad actor, but it does make you less interesting to me personally. I was pleased that my favorite podcast dropped an episode late last night. I’m in the middle of listening to it now. I have gleaned many ideas that apply to someone who wonders, “What should someone who is worried about political violence do now?” Spoiler: one of those things is *not* to explain away any type of violence by suggesting that the victim had it coming. The podcast distinguishes the good-faith quest to understand the context of violence from the attribution of a monocausal explanation for why something happens. For example, in the late 90’s, was it reasonable to say that the heavy footprint/actions of the United States in the Middle East increased the size of the target on America’s back – and that it is a factor when we consider why people want to commit acts of terrorism against the United States? Yes, that reasoning is totally normal and true. But, on September 12, 2001, it was not normal, and it was not true to say, “*This* is why this happened.”
Looking forward to the meeting. Hope you got some sleep last night!
-Jon
p.s. From what I’ve read and looked at so far, he strikes me as a decent guy with whom I disagree on several important issues.
p.p.s. https://www.wethefifth.com/p/523-on-the-assassination-of-charlie?r=7zcij
Here, here Kmele. The story is that a schizophrenic man that has been arrested (and released) multiple times , attacked a 23 year old woman coming back from her job at a pizza shop. What does the man’s race have to do with it? The right is playing the same freaking game that the left has. It’s tragic regardless of the amount of melanin in the perpetrator’s or victim’s skin. The issue is that violent, mentally ill people, who should be in mental institutions are running loose on our streets.
Totally agree. The coverage I’ve seen has been saying “but if he was white and the victim was black, the left would have been all over it”. That’s exactly why the right shouldn’t be making it about race, not doing the exact same thing.
Yes but they’re calling out the hypocrisy of it all, which needs to happen. The (rather leftist) media has been race baiting for years and is largely responsible for all the 2020 bullshit. And it has to fit the Narrative. People are frustrated at the double standard.
Yeah we tried that colorblind shit. The left manifestly doesn't want it. If my races and more importantly my kids race is going to constantly be used against me, you bet damn sure I want other people's races front and center when there are patterns in their shitty behavior. I have eyes and a brain.
I can see patterns. Race as used in the US is stupid, but it is used everywhere and with great crudeness. A giant cudgel. Expecting a group of people getting beat with a cudgel all their life to not pick it up when it falls at their feet is asinine.
I guess that’s fine if you want an endless cycle of everyone just pointing out hypocrisy, then doing the exact thing they criticise the other side for, etc etc.
At some point someone has to actually just do the thing they think is right, if it’s wrong to be obsessed with race, then stop being obsessed with race. What alternative is there?
I have a good friend of 20+ years who is employed as an English professor at a UC school. Dating back to our time at undergrad he has always been proudly and vocally Marxist, and we've had fun over the years ribbing each other and the fact that we disagree about nearly everything politically. This has never once gotten in the way of our friendship.
When he publicly (at least, on IG) danced on the grave of Brian Thompson, I said nothing.
When he publicly danced on the grave of Wesley LePatner (BREIT CEO), I said nothing.
Now that he's doing the same following the murder of Charlie Kirk, I will say something... I'm just not sure that today or even tomorrow is the right time to do it.
This is an educator of young people. He is a father. But to be honest he is also a person I now find morally repugnant and not someone I want to associate with anymore, and given our history this makes me profoundly sad.
It’s bad, his dancing!
I was at work when a good friend of mine came in and showed me a picture on instagram that a friend of his drew, it was a caricature of charlie kirk shot in the neck. And my friend was pretty gleeful about it, he was pretty gleeful about the whole thing. I hear a lot of stuff like this from some people at work, and I’ve done a pretty good job of just being sort of blasé about these types of things, like “oh ha ha man yeah thats great,” even though I am tempted to give the lecture of “violence never solves anything and this is horrible”. But I just didn’t do that, and more and more I’ve become better at just kind of shrugging this kind of thing off even though I am absolutely disgusted by it. I don’t know if it’s negative to kind of give up on that, or I just don’t want to say another thing that will fall on deaf ears by pointing out the hypocrisy of it all and make potential enemies out of people who are misguided about this (or whatever) to say the least. I’m just shocked above all at left leaning people who are jumping up and down gloating about this when I consider myself to be such a liberal and come from that background. I mean I’m just so shocked. Everyone’s principles just went out the window at some point, and it feels like it happened so quickly.
I suppose some people made snide remarks about Jesus and MLK when they died. But the death of a human who isn’t seeking to do bad things is terrible.
Why weren’t you brave, why didn’t you call bullshit on a person being gleeful of a caricature of a murder? That is the easiest thing in the world to condemn.
No, it is, and thats a fair question. I remember telling the same people how shitty luigi mangione was, and I remember even condemning the trump shootings both times. I’ve told the same people the same things more than once, and I know how they feel. They have made up their mind about political violence for people they disfavor. I know they hear me, but their feelings lie where they are. There’s a time and a place, and more often than not, the better thing to do is listen and maybe maybe every once in a while you get to get a point in- but thats it.
I'd like to thank you three tremendously for this. I've been growing more an more disillusioned by most political analysis, including yours at times, but this was a sobering reminder that there are very few people willing to actually grapple with where America is at right now. I'm naturally an optimist, but these past few months have been trying for me. I've been working on building a deeper understanding of American cultural history, but have been continuously distracted by the endless noise. Knowing that there are still people like Michael, Kmele, and Matt that can cut through the bullshit, is heartening. Luckily, I've seen enough good from the response to remain optimistic, even if the near future is bleak. It's just enough to continue learning, thinking, and hoping. If not for my life, but for my children's.