US political violence generates a familiar cycle - this time it's in overdrive

The closing verse of Judges is the editorial verdict on an entire era of cyclical violence — a society that had been given law and covenant but descended, step by step, into tribal atrocity. The refrain 'everyone did what was right in his own eyes' is not a celebration of freedom but a diagnosis of anarchy: the absence of acknowledged transcendent authority produces not liberty but vendetta.

The parallel is structural, not merely tonal. The book of Judges documents a people cycling through provocation, violence, temporary relief, and renewed violence — each cycle worse than the last, precisely the 'familiar cycle in overdrive' the article describes.

When a nation's political actors each claim absolute moral authority for their own cause and none acknowledge a standard above themselves, the Judges pattern reasserts itself: violence becomes the only arbiter. The escalating political violence in America echoes a society in which every faction is its own king, and every opponent is a legitimate target.

The church that reads Judges knows this story does not end well without repentance — and knows equally that repentance, not political victory, is the only exit.

Paul's warning to Timothy names a specific moral profile that characterizes 'times of difficulty' in the last days — and the list is not abstract. 'Brutal,' 'unappeasable,' 'slanderous,' and 'without self-control' describe a social character, not merely individual sins; Paul envisions these traits becoming culturally normative, the ambient temperature of public life.

The prophecy does not require a singular cataclysmic event; it describes a gradual hardening of social character that makes political violence not exceptional but expected.

The article's observation that America's political violence is 'familiar' and 'cyclical' and now 'in overdrive' fits Paul's description of a society in which brutality has lost its power to shock — because it has become normal. 'Unappeasable' and 'slanderous' describe a political culture in which no compromise is possible and opponents are treated as existential threats worthy of destruction.

This passage calls the reader not to political analysis but to personal sobriety: 'avoid such people' (v. 5), and refuse to be conformed to the spirit of the age.

This proverb states a governing principle of political theology: national flourishing is not primarily economic or military but moral. The Hebrew word translated 'reproach' (חֶסֶד used inversely here — actually חֶרְפָּה, 'shame' or 'disgrace') carries the sense of a stain that weakens a people before God and before the nations.

The principle applies universally — 'any people' — meaning it is not a uniquely Israelite promise but a pattern woven into the fabric of human society: when wickedness is normalized at the civic level, national dignity and cohesion erode.

A nation where political violence has become a 'familiar cycle' is a nation experiencing what Proverbs names as reproach — not merely bad optics, but the structural weakening that follows the abandonment of righteousness. The acceleration described in the article is the reproach deepening.

The remedy Proverbs implies is not a better political strategy but a return to righteousness — a call the church is uniquely positioned to issue, and uniquely obligated not to muffle.