The murder of Charlie Kirk and the World Trade Center attack

 

The founder of Turning Point USA and key supporter of President Trump, Charlie Kirk, was shot dead yesterday while speaking at Utah Valley University in that state.

There's already been an immense amount of verbiage spouted by all the usual suspects on both the left and the right of US politics.  I'd just like to point out that Mr. Kirk's murder is merely the latest act in the growing intolerance, sectarianism and naked violence that's become a feature of our political debate since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

So much changed in America on that day, and in the months and years that followed.  Life became more precarious, less insulated from the violence of the modern world.  We went to war, and spent thousands of lives (and tens of thousands more wounded and maimed servicemen) in an ultimately failed effort to combat terrorism and reimpose what our politicians saw as US dominance.  The scars of that conflict are visible all over the world to this day, in countries that have become unstable, violent and brutal - including our own.

Inevitably, that failure has had its impact on our internal politics.  Far too many of us are all too ready to lash out, less willing to talk, not amenable to compromise.  It's "our way or the highway", and we're ready to consign to the highway anyone with whom we disagree.  That's what somebody did to Charlie Kirk yesterday.  His very existence, and the message he proclaimed, threatened their own views of and desires for this country, so they killed him.

I knew almost nothing about Mr. Kirk before yesterday.  I've never followed Turning Point USA, and didn't pay much attention to his electioneering.  Nevertheless, his murder is a body blow to political discourse and sanity in America, because right now there are undoubtedly many on the conservative side of our political divide who are more than willing to see murder committed against a Kirk equivalent on the liberal/progressive side.  Any prospect for tolerance and discussion is, for the time being, almost certainly dead in the water.

That means, whether or not we agreed with Mr. Kirk or President Trump, we're all damaged by this murder.  What will its wider, long-term impact be?  Nobody can say . . . but I suggest we'd better be thinking and praying very hard about it.

Rod Dreher has some very faith-filled and insightful commentary on this tragedy.

Charlie Kirk was no friend of the extreme right. But I fear that the gruesome slaying of Iryna Zarutska by a deranged black man, and now the assassination of Kirk — interesting that both bled out from a wound to the same place on their necks — will be a signal to militant far-right groups to go active. I hope I’m wrong. The urge to do something is powerful. I feel it too. But do what? White people and conservatives don’t burn down cities. Yet the capacity to absorb leftist violence is not infinite.

. . .

I suspect that today and in the days to come, there will be some people online cheering on the prospect of civil war, of violence to settle scores ... the fractures are so deep in America today. True, we are nowhere remotely close to the political violence that savaged the country in the late 1960s and early 1970s; reading Days Of Rage is a necessary corrective to fevered speculation about today’s climate. Nevertheless, there was at that time deep tissue connecting Americans, and that gave the country resilience. I fear that has gone now ... something wicked this way comes. We all know this. Prepare.

There's more at the link.  It's worth reading in full.

May Mr. Kirk rest in peace, and may his family receive what comfort they may;  and may his murderer(s?) be swiftly brought to justice.

Peter