THE DEATH OF A NATION
This morning I read a news story about a woman who was run over by her coworker and left in the street. The woman behind the wheel was apparently known for being a reckless driver and it is presumed that the initial incident wasn’t malicious. Realizing she’d hit someone, the woman exited her vehicle, picked up a piece of her bumper that had broken off on impact… and left her victim, satisfied that no one would know it was her. In the comments, scores of women laughed. “Girl, I’ve had those days!”
Around 1 p.m., I was driving in heavy traffic along the I-10. A car in the far left lane swerved across three lanes of traffic, risking a massive multi-car pile-up, which would have included me. The reason? He or she felt that 70mph in a 60 in heavy traffic wasn’t fast enough.
And of course, there’s the story of Ukranian refugee Iryna Zarutska. She’d escaped wartorn Ukraine with her mother and brother. She got a job at a Pizzeria. On her way home at night, she got on public transportation. As she looked at her phone, a man who had been jailed and released repeatedly stabbed her to death. Almost as horrible as the stabbing itself was the people around her. They did nothing. As she lay dying, the woman to her left looked at her then got up and walked away.
I’m not a fan of pharmaceutical companies, but I thought the murder of a CEO by Luigi Mangione was disgusting. But even more disturbing were the people who both celebrated and sexualized Luigi. I knew then that we had crossed a rubicon.
And now Charlie Kirk has been murdered. He was beginning another campus debate tour. Hundreds of people attended the debate. People like to miscategorize Charlie’s actions as attempts to play “gotcha” with children. Those children are at most a decade away from having a controling political power over the future. They are the future, in fact. Those debates were there to foster discourse and challenge their ideas. For that, he was shot in the neck by a lunatic in support of Trans and Antifa ideology.
If you’ve seen the video of Kirk’s assassination, you should be angry. It is horrific, like something out of a Tarantino film. Weeks later, it is still being celebrated by morally repugnant people who have decided he is evil and they are “the good guys”.
It’s insane. I don’t care how much I disagree with someone. I have many friends whom I disagree with on a fundamental level. That does not erase their value as human beings.
Cowards raise swords when they know that their hearts lack conviction and their pens have no ink.
Sadly, that is where this is going. A large portion of the population has decided that the ends justify the means. They’ve been there for a while. It was barely a year ago that Corey Comperatore died saving his wife and youngest daughter from a bullet that grazed President Trump.
A day later, comedian Kyle Gass stood on stage at a Tenacious D concert and declared that his birthday wish was that the next assassin didn’t miss. Not long after, a second would-be assassin was caught at Mar a Lago while President Trump was golfing.
It has only been a year later. We’ve all but forgotten about these incidents.
The attempts on President Trump’s life and the murder of Charlie Kirk aren’t surprising, thought they should be.
For more than ten years, people have become increasingly comfortable with accusing people they don’t like of being Nazis. About eight years ago, I myself had the word lobbed in my direction by some nameless, keyboard wielding coward on the internet.
Nazi isn’t just a word. It’s a target painted on the backs of anyone who disagrees. It’s a signal to those who pick up their swords that you’re fair game. Because to call someone a Nazi is to directly say that you are going to kill them unless they kill you first. It literally justifies violence and has led to people openly calling for it and in some cases, acting upon it.
It doesn’t matter if the person saying it even knows the definition of the word. All that matters is that you, Charlie Kirk, or whoever, plays the villain in the narrative of their story.
At the heart of the problem is a death of the moral center of this country.
The United States has never been perfect. It certainly has its bloody, ugly side. But for the most part, people used to care about others. We don’t now. Everyone imagines themselves the center of the Universe. Their opinions are treated like righteous proclamations from a mountaintop. How many people refuse to talk to family members because of who they voted for? Literally choosing politicians over the people who raised them? It’s ridiculous.
This isn’t a Left versus Right issue.
We treat everything like it’s good people versus bad people. And most of you decide who the good people are based on whether there’s an R or a D on their voter registration card.
We have to change how we interact with the rest of the world. That person you claim to hate… they’re doing exactly the same thing you are. They’re trying to protect the people they love. That doesn’t make them evil. It makes them human. They have the same goal. We just don’t agree on our philosophy.
How often do you declare someone stupid or crazy or evil based on their opinion? Maybe they’re not crazy. Maybe they’re just wrong. Or… here’s a wild thought… maybe you’re wrong.
No, no. Not possible. Your every thought must be sacrosanct.
Everyone says they want the world to be a better place, but no one wants to be the one to lay the first brick in the foundation. We’d rather cling to our bitterness and self-righteousness and hope someone else comes along and does the work.
Here’s the rub, folks. If you want the world to be a better place, you have to be a better person. Brick by brick, person by person, that’s how you build it.
That’s why I brought up the other stories. One man’s assassination isn’t the sudden shifting of tides. It is all the little cuts along the way that destroy us.
I’ve never met Charlie Kirk.
I’ve watched some of his work. Some things I agreed with totally and other times I thought he was wrong. He seemed like a well-meaning, hard working young man who stood by his beliefs. More than I can say for a lot of people these days. While I feel for his children and wife, in the end, it isn’t him I’m upset about. I can’t be sad about the death of a man I never met.
Its the symbolism that gets me. The death of discourse. The death of civility and empathy. The end of hope and the slow death of a nation.
Rest in Peace, Charlie. You left the world a better place than you found it. Now it’s up to the rest of us to do the same.
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