U.S. Pirate Party Captain Jolly Mitch Davilo has urged Americans to reject political scapegoating and unite against what he described as decades of manufactured division by those in power, calling for accountability “to each other.”
In a September 19 column for the party’s Through the Spyglass series, Davilo linked a series of recent violent acts to what he saw as an ongoing “Culture War” stoked by political elites, warning that such incidents reflect a dangerous climate of polarization and mistrust. He cited the recent shootings at Colorado’s Evergreen High School and Minneapolis’ Annunciation Catholic School, as well as the fatal shooting of Minnesota Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the wounding of State Senator John Hoffman and his wife.
Davilo also referenced two additional incidents he said had been “lost in the shuffle” following the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk in Utah, specifically the death of a Black student found hanged at Delta State University in Mississippi and the assault of a party supporter’s friend, a transgender woman in Renton, Washington, who was reportedly beaten by a group of teenagers while they hurled homophobic slurs.
Authorities have since ruled the Delta State University death a suicide, though the victim’s family is pursuing an independent autopsy.
“There is no doubt in my mind that we are heading in a direction we may not be able to come back from if we don’t address it now,” Davilo wrote. “We might not have reached that point of no return yet, but I fear just how close we might be.”
Davilo contended that both major parties have contributed to the current atmosphere, singling out Republican leaders for advancing policies and rhetoric that, in his view, seek a return to a “pre-Civil Rights era,” while faulting Democrats for enabling strategies such as the “Pied Piper” approach to candidate selection.
He also traced current tensions back to the election of Ronald Reagan, who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as well as the rise of Republican congressional leader Newt Gingrich during the Clinton administration. In his view, their approach “turned an unwillingness to change with the times into a full-blown Culture War,” laying the groundwork for more recent divisions.
“The trans person is not your enemy. The Catholic is not your enemy. The people who work for a living are not your enemy,” Davilo wrote, urging readers to focus their frustration on “those in power […] who want us angry and against each other instead of them.”
Davilo called for citizens to hold themselves accountable to one another, resist division, and remember their shared humanity in the face of partisan conflict. “You have far more in common with a trans person from the city as a farmer from the sticks than you do with Elon Musk,” he wrote, ending with, “Love thy neighbor. Beware of false gods.”
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