What do we do about political violence?

After the security breach at the White House Correspondents Dinner, my algorithm was immediately full of people — including people I know personally, and whose judgment I trust— calling it a false flag or a set up. I myself said it was fishy, because of how little security seemed prepared for something as simple as a dude running in the building with weapons. But the absolute dismissal of a potential act of political violence (even in myself) was something I couldn’t stop thinking about. We’re all used to it. No one trusts the administration anyway. The rhetoric of the right feeds into this. Etc. So what do we do? I asked Rachel Kleinfeld, a a senior fellow in Carnegie’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program who has spent decades studying political violence abroad. Ten years ago, she came home.