How to Get a Visit from the Secret Service

I just did a livestream with Nicholas Decker (X, Substack), a PhD student at George Mason University. I met Nick last year at Manifest, and encouraged him to write more, as I thought he had a lot of interesting ideas. I believe I might’ve also told him to not be afraid of being provocative. He apparently took that advice to heart!

For the last few days, he’s become a major villain among MAGAs for his article “When Must We Kill Them?” His tweet promoting the essay has as of this writing gotten over 10 million views. Nick has been receiving nonstop threats through email and twitter, and even had a visit from the Secret Service. I ask him what that’s been like, and also how he thinks the recent controversy will affect his future job prospects. Surprisingly, he thinks it will actually help.

I disagree with Nick that this is something we should even be discussing at this point. See my article on why political assassinations are bad. But I do have to admit that there’s nothing wrong with saying that there can be a time when government crosses a line, at which point violence is acceptable. And he’s been extremely brave throughout this whole thing, even posting the address he was living at before his landlord kicked him out.

Prior to this incident, his biggest brush with attention was over his argument that he wants to have children that are not genetically his own. I ask Nick whether he’s found the people whose offspring he would like to raise, how he selected them, and what his timeline is for becoming a parent.

You’ll find that Nick isn’t exactly what you might expect. He is a kind of über nerd whose eyes light up when discussing dense economics papers. We talk about one of my favorite articles he has written, on how consulting can make firms more efficient.

Nick is someone I have been reading and would’ve been happy to stream with at some point anyway, so this controversy mostly just provided an excuse to chat. I don’t think we should be talking about political violence at this point, but I am an admirer of intellect and courage, and Nick has unquestionably shown a high degree of both. Admittedly, I also love a good anti-MAGA troll, probably to a fault. It seems likely that Nick has the same weakness.