Last weekend, I was with about 70 people who toured an apartment building in Chicago.
Not literally. It was a theater production — immersive, they call it — called Port of Entry. You follow actors through rooms like you're inside the walls of their lives. You see them cook. Argue. Try to sleep. Try to stay married. Try to keep going.
Every scene is based on the real story of someone who immigrated to the United States.
But the one that hit hardest was about a family from Mexico.
A father, working hard, paying taxes, legally applying for residency — gets deported. The mother is left scrambling to raise their kids alone. The children get stuck in legal limbo.
And the thing that stuck with me wasn’t just the injustice of it.
It was how normal it felt. How easy it was to accept the rules of the world I’d stepped into. How quickly I started playing along — defending a character’s backstory, arguing about “what we had to do.”
I didn’t just follow the story. I inhabited it.
It felt good to be loyal. Even to something I didn’t believe.
And that’s the part I can’t shake.
“No one commits evil without first being convinced they are doing good.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
That’s the trick, isn’t it?
Most moral manipulation doesn’t start with lies. It starts with stories that feel true enough — stories that give us a role. A purpose. A cause.
Once you’ve accepted the part, it gets harder to question the script.
Which brings me to violent communication.
It’s easy to think this work is about arguing better. Calling out distortion. Keeping facts straight. And sure — that matters.
But the deeper danger is quieter:
How language slowly recruits good people to do harm.
Because before you can start breaking up families and traumatizing children, you need millions of people to accept the idea. Even defend it.
You do that by changing how we talk.
You don’t say “families.” You say “illegals.”
You don’t say “refugees.” You say “invasion.”
You don’t say “ripping children from their parents.” You say “protecting our borders.”
After enough exposure, people don’t see humans being needlessly terrorized.
They see dangerous objects being dealt with.
See how it works?
Dress it up in the right language, and cruelty becomes a necessity. Injustice becomes common sense. And the people who voted for it will sleep just fine.
Because they think they’re helping.
That’s the breadth of violent communication: it doesn’t just justify harm — it recruits decent people to cause it.
Port of Entry reminded me that we’re all wired for story. And if you don’t notice which one you’re in — you’ll follow it to the end, thinking it was your idea all along.
So here’s the move:
Start paying attention to the role people think they’re playing. Especially yourself.
When someone starts defending something that feels off, ask:
What story have they bought into — and what would they have to give up to walk away from it?
People don’t just cling to beliefs.
They cling to characters.
That’s what violent communication helps us see — and gently undo.
Before I continue, I want you to know this is part one of a series I’m writing about the excruciating toll this kind of language takes on our society.
The immigration situation in the U.S. is a massive, multi-layered crisis. I won’t pretend to cover it all.
But I think it’s a powerful example of the way violent communication can turn a good society rotten.
—
I walked out of that building deep in thought. Feeling sorrow — not just for the families being destroyed, but for the people helping make it happen… and still believing they’re on the side of good.
That’s what scares me most.
In part two of this series, I’ll show you how violent communication doesn’t just justify harm — it reshapes entire belief systems.
Talk soon,
Austin