"Human nature is immutable"

Chris Stirewalt responds to a correspondent who wonders how concerned he is about the level of political violence in recent years:

.... Human nature is immutable, therefore the history of humanity repeats the same themes and trends over and over again. I wrote about how the political violence of the 1960s and 1970s far exceeded that of our time, but pick any era and you will find plenty of awful stuff: labor unrest, race riots, assassinations and more. We have ended up in our current predicament because it is human nature to be forgetful and ungrateful. We assume good times will go on forever and are always somehow surprised when the forces that have always shaped history return to kick us squarely in our hindquarters. The American system and our culture have proved remarkably successful at protecting us from the worst depredations of this cycle, but human nature will never be abolished. ....

Chris Stirewalt, The Dispatch, March 31, 2022.