Strawberries in Winter

> Most Americans do not want civil war. Anyone who is declaring it should stop.

https://archive.ph/NgkX5

The apparent purpose of the article is to editorialize about another Atlantic piece, which in turn presents the following quote from Trump's speech about the assassination:

> For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.

> My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law-enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country. From the attack on my life in Butler, Pennsylvania, last year, which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on ICE agents, to the vicious murder of a health-care executive in the streets of New York, to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others, radical-left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.

and proposes that this is somehow engineered to heighten the conflict, rather than to promise to restore order.

I don't understand the reasoning. Of course Trump is focused on those acts of political violence committed by the left; he's on the right. Of course the shooter was a leftist; no rightist would have reason to do this, except as a false flag, which would be taking us quite far into conspiratorial thinking. Trump knew who Kirk was; he didn't need evidence for this part — but we also can't say for sure that he didn't have insider information.

Meanwhile, the argument selectively ignores that

> President Donald Trump said Charlie Kirk “was an advocate of nonviolence” and said, “That’s the way I’d like to see people respond” to his killing.

(https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-trump-says-he-wa...)

For LaFrance to go on at length like this against civil war, while throwing in sentences like "Donald Trump’s speech... should frighten any American who rejects political violence, cares about civil liberties, and dislikes government interference." (along with a bunch of other stuff about his use of the National Guard etc.), shows clearly that he is trying to push the narrative that Trump is for it; but this is flatly contradicted by the available evidence.