A Normalcy Crisis: How Extremes Are Eating the Center

America is exhausted. Not by inflation, not by foreign wars, not even by crime. The real exhaustion comes from living in a country hijacked by its loudest fringes.

I am proudly an American and an Israeli,  What I have been seeing in both countries has been disturbing me for a very long time. As someone who loves American politics in all its forms, I am disturbed by how politics have changed in such a short time.

In the United States we have on the right, movements that once claimed to conserve but now have become addicted to destruction. The right sneers at institutions, peddles conspiracy theories, and treats elections as optional when they don’t win. Patriotism has been warped into paranoia, and compromise is branded as betrayal.

On the left, progressivism has morphed into a culture of purity.  Dissent is punished, debate is replaced with cancellation, and every issue is treated as a test of total ideological loyalty. What once aimed to expand tolerance now polices it, pushing away allies who might agree on 80% but refuse to bend on 100%.

So, what is the result in the US? A hollowing out of the center. Ordinary Americans—the vast majority I believe—are neither MAGA diehards nor woke warriors. They want safe streets, good schools, a fair shot at opportunity, and a government that works. But their voices are drowned out by the extremists who dominate headlines and party primaries.

Normalcy has become radical. Pragmatism is treated as weakness. Moderation as treason.

Both fringes feed off each other in a toxic cycle: the more extreme one side grows, the more the other justifies going further. It’s a political arms race of outrage.

When the Noise Becomes a Tragedy: Charlie Kirk’s Death

Still, as of the writing of these words the identity and motive of the shooter are not known. The assassination/murder/killing of Charlie Kirk (choose whatever works best for you) — while speaking at Utah Valley University during his “American Comeback Tour” — is not just another news shock. It’s a brutal crystallization of what happens when rhetoric, polarization, and identity politics are allowed to escalate without restraint.

Here’s how this event plugs right into the narratives that have been ripping at America’s center:

• Weaponization of Grievance
  On the radical right, Kirk immediately became a martyr, a symbol blamed on the “radical left” even before the shooter is identified. Calls for vengeance. Accusations without proof. Radical rhetoric that the left has failed to “control.” This is exactly how grievance is weaponized: you turn a death into political ammunition.
• Double-edged outcry from the left
  Some progressive voices, while condemning the violence, called out Kirk’s own history of inflammatory speech, bigotry, and conspiracy theories. They say the environment he helped cultivate—of demonization, polarizing language, identity-based attacks—helps set the stage for political violence, even if no one can say for sure whether that was the motive here.
• Breakdown of shared norms
  What’s chilling is how quickly norms—due process, presumption of innocence, avoiding rhetorical escalation—were abandoned. Immediately after the shooting, figures on both sides rushed to pin blame. The right insists this is proof the Left is dangerous; the left warns about how rhetoric leads to violence. Neither waits for the facts. That is a symptom of the breakdown.
• Fueling of the cycle
  Tragedies like this feed the feedback loop. After the Kirk killing: more fear on one side, more accusation from the other, more political violence claimed or anticipated as justification. It pushes moderates back, punishes caution, rewards the extremes who speak loudest.

If America wants to survive this age of performative politics, it needs to reject not only physical violence but also the rhetorical kind that makes violence more likely. It needs leaders who don’t see every act of grief as a political opportunity, and citizens who demand measured speech — even (especially) when anger and fear are high.

In Israel, it’s not less complicated.  More on that later.