The murder of Charlie Kirk is a national tragedy.
It is difficult to overestimate the enormity of what happened on Wednesday at the Campus of the University of Utah Valley, where a civil debate on the policy that takes place under the sunny skies became a spectacle of bloody terror with what will surely be lasting national consequences.
The immediate sequelae of the death of the right of the right have evoked part of the fear and instability of the United States in the late 1980s, when the murders of political figures such as Robert F. Kennedy and Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. led to national introspection and anguish about exactly who we thought we were.
A violent death like this decreases us all. Violence engenders violence. He undermines the very basis of our democracy: our elections, our freedoms of the first amendment, our commitment to the peaceful transfer of power, already stressed as never before by the autocratic ambitions of our current president.
“Our nation is broken,” said Utah Spencer Cox governor. “We have recently had political murders in Minnesota. We had an attempt to murder about the governor of Pennsylvania. And we had an attempt to murder about a presidential candidate and former president of the United States and now current president of the United States.”
Those who “celebrated even a bit in the news of this shooting,” added Utah's governor: “I beg you to look at you in the mirror and see if you can find an angel better there somewhere.” Amen.
Social networks, never a lighthouse of calm in a crisis, have become a well of guilt and anger.
“The left is the murder festival,” published the homeless owner of X, Elon Musk.
“President Trump needs to declare the Democratic Party as national terrorists,” a user published with more than half a million followers and an image of Kirk like his avatar.
Demonstrating the selective outrage for which Fox News is the infamous host and in stellar schedule, Jesse Watters, he declared: “We are going to avenge Charlie's death in the way Charlie would want him to avenge. They are at war with us … What will we do about it?”
Before his calls to “non -violence” on Thursday, and an offer of concern for the country, President Trump blamed the rhetoric of “the radical left” for Kirk's murder. “The political violence of the radical left has hurt too many innocent people and has gained too many lives,” Trump said in an engraved statement from the Oval office.
At this point, we don't know who killed Kirk or why. The authorities say they have found a rifle that suspect that it was used in the shooting. On Thursday, they published two photos of a person who believe it can be involved. If they can arrest a suspect, it is likely that these questions be answered soon enough.
What we do know is that Kirk, a father married to two young children, came out as a happy warrior, easily in political discussions in university campuses with ideological opponents. But there was a dark side in the commitment of his campus; Some academics who landed in their “teacher surveillance list” blamed the “leftist propaganda” or discriminate against conservative students, faced harassment.
His debates on the “Try” campus with students and teachers often became viral online.
As many political analysts have said, he was more responsible than any other person for attracting legions of young adults to the Bajo Trump Republican party. When Kirk founded its non -profit conservator Turning Point USA in 2012, only 37% of voters 18 to 29 supported Mitt Romney for president. By 2024, the percentage of the Republican party had increased to 46%.
Kirk's messages of white victimization and, more and more, their hug to Christian nationalism, were hateful for many, but deeply resonated for a generation of young Americans who are not sure of what the future holds, but quite sure that they are obtaining the short extreme of a cosmic stick. Often, his rhetoric was hateful. “We need to have a Nuremberg style trial for each clinic doctor who affirms the genre,” he once said.
In a video posted on social networks last month, Kirk praised the simplicity of what he described as the American lifestyle. “I want to get married, buy a house, have children, allow them to ride a bicycle until the sun is put on, send them to a good school, have a low crime neighborhood, not that my child is taught to lesbian, gay and transgender garbage in their school. Although also, not having to listen to the call to prayer to prayer to prayer.
Recently in X, Kirk wrote: “Islam is the sword that the left is using to cut the throat of America.”
The point, however, is that Kirk had ideas. Bad ideas. And yes, even dangerous ideas.
But ideas cannot be stopped with bullets or anything else. Ideologies cannot be exterminated (that applies to both Islam and Christian nationalism).
And violence comes from all directions: the right, the left and the non -ideological or mental environment.
One of the terrible ironies of Kirk's murder was his firm support for weapons rights.
In a 2023 resurgent interview that has been widely publicized, and ruthlessly mocked for its many enemies, Kirk said: “It is worth having a cost of, unfortunately, some deaths for weapons every year so we can have the second amendment to protect our other rights given. That is a prudent agreement.”
What to say, especially of a father at any time when school shootings have become everyday tragedies.
If our leaders were rational beings, the death of Charlie Kirk would be the last tail.
They would realize that the problem with American armed violence is not rhetorical, they are actually weapons, and do something about it.
Bluesky: @rabcar
Rags: @rabcar
