You don’t have to engage with crazy

There was a time when James Carville was one of the sharpest political minds in the country — quick, blunt, and effective. He could take a complicated moment and reduce it to something people could carry. That skill is what makes watching him now so unsettling.

Sitting alone, looking into a camera, and unleashing a stream of profanity and rage, it feels less like strategy and more like something unraveling in public. The volume is high, the emotion even higher. It’s completely out of proportion to the moment.

Someone willing to torch his career, his reputation, or even his freedom is not waiting around for your argument.

There’s a sadness to that. Somewhere along the way, he decided this was necessary. You can almost trace the descent, step by step, to a place where that kind of display felt reasonable.

But this isn’t just about one man.

We used to have a line. Not perfection or agreement, but a shared understanding that how we conduct ourselves matters.

That line has eroded, and most people can feel it. This didn’t start yesterday. We’ve been coarsening for a long time.

Years ago, if you were furious, you wrote it out, read it, said it out loud, and then burned it.

Now we broadcast what used to be processed privately. And once it’s out there, it multiplies.

Some people don’t just brush up against this behavior. They live in orbit around it.

Family caregivers know this terrain in a way most people don’t, not because they’re wiser, but because they’re required to learn. Addiction. Dementia. Chronic pain. They discover that not every situation can be reasoned through.

And those lessons transfer.

What you learn sitting across from someone in addiction or confusion applies when you’re standing in front of someone screaming in a parking lot or filming themselves in a rage they can’t govern.

There is a moment where something crosses a line. The defensiveness sharpens. The aggression follows. The reaction no longer fits the moment.

And in that moment, you realize you are no longer dealing with the issue in front of you. You are dealing with something underneath it.

There’s a story behind it, which is why, if it’s hysterical, it’s historical. At that point, you are not in a conversation. You are standing in front of something that will not respond to reason.

Someone willing to torch his career, his reputation, or even his freedom is not waiting around for your argument.

It is a tug of war.

If you win, you end up on your back. If you lose, you end up on your face. Either way, you are in the dirt.

So do not pick up the rope.

That runs against our instincts. We want to engage, correct, and win. But if you take hold, you are no longer engaging a person. You are engaging the disorder or the wound. That is a fight you cannot win.

I have learned this lesson the hard way. I have leaned in, pressed harder, and tried to force clarity into moments that could not hold it. All it did was pull me deeper into the chaos.

So you learn to do something different. You slow down, take a breath, and create space.

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Sometimes that space is physical. Sometimes it is emotional. Sometimes it is simply refusing to engage. You do not have to comment, respond, or show up for every fight you’re invited to.

Scripture speaks to this. The apostle Paul wrote, “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Romans 12:18).

If possible.

Sometimes it is not. Sometimes the other person has already decided otherwise. But you do get a vote on how you conduct yourself. That is where self-control comes in.

Self-control is not passivity or cowardice. There are times to confront and times when authority must be exercised, even forcefully. But even then, you are not called to function out of rage. You are called to do what is necessary.

And we are seeing more and more people choose escalation. A routine traffic stop becomes a standoff. A disagreement on a plane becomes removal from the aircraft. A minor infraction becomes handcuffs.

Crazy doesn’t let go, but that does not mean you have to hold on.

You don’t have to pick up the rope. You don’t have to match the volume. You don’t have to join the unraveling.

In a culture that rewards outrage, the rarest strength is self-control. And self-control may be the only thing that allows you to walk through chaos without joining it.