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I opened my computer last night to work on a local article when I learned about Charlie Kirk’s death.
Kirk, a co-founder of a national conservative youth movement, was a polarizing figure. The shooting highlights that people see the direction of this country, where it is now and where it’s going, in vastly different ways.
The country that existed even 40 years ago is gone. In response to a political party that has increasingly become more radicalized, conservative dissent has gone from a slow simmer to a rapid boil. The cover flew off with the election of Donald Trump 2.0, which showed that people preferred a deeply flawed, even unscrupulous man to the locomotive we were on.
Unfortunately, the arguments aren’t always honed in ways that everyone can understand. One side is interpreted as angry, aggressive, even racist when people, in their hearts, are expressing loss, heartfelt anger, and fear.
The divide was on display locally during Twisp Town Council hearings on a proclamation on immigration, which carries almost no legal weight, but was debated by both sides. Despite numerous public comments expressing concern about the proclamation, the leader of the initiative appeared tone deaf when she dismissed opposing viewpoints and insisted that the proclamation was not controversial. She feigned agreement when there wasn’t one.
This town kept their poise.
In other places, someone brought a gun to a rooftop.
The left used to be advocates for change, conservatives for the status quo. Today, those roles are reversed. Conservatives are fighting what they see as a long overdue battle to get their country back.
Kirk was on the first of 15 stops across college campuses on what he called “American Comeback Tour.” He addressed the crowd and answered questions while sitting under a canopy that read, “Prove Me Wrong.” He was engaging in civil discourse until someone silenced him. Ironically, seconds before his own shooting, he was asked a question about mass shootings.
There are no suspects except for a dark figure on a rooftop 150 yards away. One perfectly aimed shot in the neck is all it took for front page headlines to ripple across the country. Kirk leaves behind his wife and two children under three.
I was not a follower a Kirk. I only knew him as a prominent figure in the conservative movement. He was one of many talking heads I had come to expect on the American landscape. When I saw a tiny headline on my phone late last night, I was in disbelief. Both left and right leaning news organizations used the word “assassination,” not murder to describe what happened to a commentator that would have turned 32 next month.
We are so divided that we can’t even grieve together. As news of the shooting reached the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, the chamber was able to stand for 30 seconds of silence before it devolved into brouhaha.
When a representative asked for a spoken prayer on the house floor, Democrats jeered, according to the New York Times, with some berating the House for ignoring a school shooting that occurred earlier in the day. A representative countered by blaming the Democrats for the shooting.
“You caused this,” the New York Times reported the female representative shouting with expletives, to which a Democrat responded, “Pass some gun laws!”
The Speaker of the House called for order several times and he got it, briefly, before the shouting resumed.
Both parties have devolved into caricatures of Animal Farm.
The school shooting yesterday in Evergreen, Colorado, was buried even by the left-leaning The New York Times, who put it south of an article entitled “Scammers Are Using Fake Reviews to Extort Small Businesses.”
School shootings have become normalized.
Assassinations, let’s hope, retain their impact.
