Is working within an existing party just too disgusting to think of?
No, my point was the recorded odds of success for assassins is much much better than conventional politics, by like several percent. How many hundreds of thousands of eager young people have enlisted in the Republican Party and associated conventional routes over the past 50 years, dedicating their lives and aspiring to change things?
How many changed things as much as, say, Sirhan Sirhan or Lee Harvey Oswald?
It seems odd to compare cherry-picked assassins to run-of-the-mill politicians. Surely the proper comparison to the hordes of eager young party members is the hordes of eager young killers? (Admittedly, someone who picks up a gun and starts shooting with the intention of changing things but is ineffectual may not earn the title "assassin" in popular consciousness, but it's not clear to me that that matters.)
A reminder for everyone: on this day in 1983, Stanislav Petrov saved the world.
It occurs to me this time around that there's an interesting relationship here - 9/26 is forgotten, while 9/11 is remembered. Do something charitable, and not patriotic, sometime today.