Enough Already

The assassination of Charlie Kirk should be (another) wakeup call.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

Matthew 5:43-44

“This gun of the hand is for the taking of human life. We believe it is wrong to take a life. That is only for God. Many times wars have come and people have said to us: you must fight, you must kill, it is the only way to preserve the good. But Samuel, there's never only one way. Remember that.”

~ Witness (1985)

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at an event in Utah Wednesday. The reaction to this tragedy has been . . . unfortunate. Not surprising, but not inspiring, either. Maybe it’s too much to expect a horrific killing to unite the country—after all, we endure endless school shootings with a sort of numb resignation these days—but it’s a still unsettling. A tragedy on top of a tragedy.

On the left, plenty of people on social media are expressing a sort of morbid glee at Kirk’s death. Grave dancing. I think people have become so detached from reality that they don’t truly fathom how horrible this all is and how much worse it could get. Kirk’s views were seen as dangerous by many, and so his death is cause for celebration. Oddly, these people cannot see how martyrdom gives the right power and emboldens radicals. The political fallout from this will be massive. The cultural fallout will be worse.

You cannot claim you are fighting for a more peaceful and just world while cheering on violence.

On the right, the reaction is one of outrage and blame. “The Left is the party of murder” Elon Musk tweeted, fanning the flames. At a moment when leaders should be urging calm, we get the exact opposite. I remain convinced that the rich and powerful want us divided. Identity politics are the perfect lever. The rich get richer and the rest of us . . . well. Our children are killed at school while we bicker and argue over the definition of a woman.

This is not sustainable. We are not so different from one another. It’s an illusion, a wild fabrication. But in the era of social media, we’re all being trained to believe that our political leanings define us, that the politics of our opponents define them. I’ve had people on Twitter tell me stuff like “the vast majority of liberals want their kids to swap genders” and other truly wild things. Enough already.

I rarely agreed with Charlie Kirk, and I didn’t much care for his style of debate, but at least he was out there engaging with the other side. We need more of that, and better. We’re unlikely to get it now. Everyone is digging in. The culture wars are getting bloody.

I have no answers. Just a request: Remember that your neighbors are human, whether the sign in their yard says Trump or Biden. They may not vote the same as you or go to the same church, but they have kids and grandkids and dogs and they like pancakes some mornings and probably watch the same TV shows as you, and they have birthdays and look forward to getting together with loved ones on Thanksgiving. They’re just as annoyed as you are with all the spam calls. Their toilets clog up and their produce goes bad in the fridge.

“The left” is not comprised of a pack of wild monsters who only understand violence. “The right” is not a fascistic bloc of radical Trumpers who want to expel all non-white people from the continent. We just see the worst examples because we’re chronically online through a distorted lens. Reality is obscured. By accepting this narrative, we give the radical fringes more power. The more we forget who we are, the more we create bogey men and monsters. The more we dehumanize the other side, the more capacity we have to do monstrous things.

There is no cure for this sickness. Only the words of Nemik from Andor: “Remember this. Try.”

We need to start listening to one another, to the average people out there who just want to go to work and get home to their families and have dinner and do the dishes and watch a movie on the couch and go to bed, whose beliefs are mostly formed not out of hatred, but out of a sense of what constitutes the good life. Disagreeing over that is fine and natural and we have a system of government that gives us a path to resolving those differences peacefully. We may vote for different politicians but at the end of the day, we’re all just trying to get by.

The other path? That way lies darkness and regret.

I realize I’m preaching to the choir. It’s unlikely that anything I say will change anyone’s mind. But you never know.