Going to extremes

In June, Melissa Hortman, leader of Minnesota's House Democratic caucus, was murdered, along with her husband, by anti- abortionist Vance Boelter, who had already shot state senator John Hoffman and his wife, and had made a kill list of Democrats and liberal figures.

- Russell Brown

Two months earlier, Pennsylvania's Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro and his family escaped an arson attack by a man with bipolar disorder, over what he imagined were Shapiro's “plans” for Palestinians.

Even by American standards, it is a febrile, alarming time. The September 10 shooting of conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk seemed like a horrifying escalation, if only for its very public nature: it was captured on a live video stream. What has followed is an escalation of a different kind, one that has reached us here.

Act Party leader David Seymour tried to have Parliament pay official tribute to Kirk, a man who held no office and whom most New Zealanders had never heard of. After the opposition blocked his bid, National Party influencer David Farrar declared on X that Kirk's murder was “a monumentally huge event”, adding, preposterously, that “only the assassination of the President or VP would reverberate more”.