Charlie Kirk was in the middle of a college campus, as he had probably been hundreds of times before. He was surrounded by a mix of supporters and critics of the influential MAGA youth leader. The large, all-caps block writing above his head read, “PROVE ME WRONG.”
Kirk’s project was to park himself in the middle of an often unfriendly space — a college campus or on a liberal podcast, for example — and invite debate. That project in itself shouldn’t be a dangerous enterprise. But it was.
On Wednesday, Charlie was murdered by an assassin. Horrifically, his wife and two young children were in attendance.
I’m sickened and heartbroken, both for his family and our country.
America is in a very bad, dark place. For years, there’s been an anger and a vengeance rumbling beneath the surface, driving more and more animosity and hatred for each other. More tribalism, more us against them.
All of this is boiling and it feels like it’s reaching a fever pitch.
But it’s been feeling that way for some time, long before Kirk’s murder, well before the shooting of two Minnesota Democratic lawmakers, before the two attempts on President Trump’s life, before the assault on Paul Pelosi, even before Jan 6. It started before Charlottesville, and before Rep. Steve Scalise was shot at a congressional baseball game. We’ve been living with political violence for years now.
And I’m asked all the time, how do we lower the temperature? When will we tone down the divisive rhetoric? How do we come together as a country again?
The painful and short answer is, I don’t think we actually want to.
It feels willfully ignorant to just accept the premise that we truly want to be a United States — a nation with shared values, respect for the sanctity of human life, a sense of community, a love for our neighbors, an empathy for those who are struggling.
No one living in this political climate could believe that. And that’s because this political climate doesn’t just encourage division and hatred, it demands it.
More than anything ideological or philosophical, the most significant force undergirding American politics today is the desire to tell people who to be mad at. We are defined more today by our enemies than our friends, and we find more value in identifying heretics than converts.
We saw it in its basest form in the hours after Kirk’s death, as ghoulish political voices on both sides made it their first job to point fingers.
On MSNBC, Matthew Dowd blamed Kirk for his own assassination, saying “And I always go back to hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have, and then saying these awful words, and then not expect awful actions to take place.” He’s since been fired.
Some Democrats were quick to blame Trump. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker pointed fingers at the Jan. 6 insurrectionists and Trump’s pardon of them, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren dismissed any insinuation of divisive rhetoric from the left by saying, “Oh, please. Why don’t you start with the president of the United States?”
It was no better from the right, where MAGA media figures and Republicans in Congress put all the blame squarely on the left.
Rep. Nancy Mace said “Democrats own what happened today.” Elon Musk said “The Left is the party of murder.”
The president himself blamed “the radical left.”
None of these folks seem particularly interested in taking the temperature down, coming together, or ending divisive rhetoric. They all just want you to be mad at the right people.
That anger now justifies all kinds of awfulness. It justifies, for some, the shooting of a health insurance CEO. For many it justifies Trump’s revenge on his political enemies. And for many others, it justifies giddy wishcasting for his death.
This ripples outward in our media, where even the job of journalism has become an exercise in tribalism. Networks and media outlets are left/right “teams” that lean into the anger and division. Charlie was part of that infrastructure and ecosystem, just as I am. There are very few clean hands here.
I’d like to think his murder will be a moment that shakes us into some common cause, where we can agree to disagree without hating each other. But that simply isn’t incentivized anymore, and many of our political leaders, even our religious leaders — the very people who should be calming us down — are only stoking more anger at each other.
Charlie Kirk’s assassination should be a wake up call. Unfortunately, I think it’s going to be a sign of even worse to come.
