Icame home from Ukraine, where the lines of division were drawn in blood and artillery. When I left, America’s politics were already fractured; when I returned, they felt unrecognizable. The assassination of Charlie Kirk—whatever one thinks of his ideas—didn’t emerge in a vacuum. It was the culmination of years of manufactured battles, exaggerated crises, and partisan trench warfare that made violence seem inevitable.

The dynamic reminds me of Donbas in 2014. The war there did not begin with tank columns and missile strikes; it began with corrosive mistrust, rival camps convinced of the other’s illegitimacy, and a political class that preferred weaponized outrage over compromise. America is not Donbas, but the parallels are hard to miss.

What follows is a running list—not comprehensive,

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