Our society is not OK. Our country is not OK. We are not OK. It’s been like this at least a decade, if not longer. But this week feels different. It feels like we crossed a Rubicon. We don’t know what’s on the other side, but it’s almost certainly worse than what came before.
Charlie Kirk was not a good person. He was a heinous, self-satisfied hate monger who profited from peddling bigotry to millions. I wouldn’t have stopped if I saw him struggling to change a tire by the side of the road. But I didn’t want to inadvertently open a link that documented his murder.
It feels radical today to say that I don’t want to witness, much less perpetrate death upon someone I viscerally dislike for their partisan and cultural opinions. There are many, many people in the United States across the political spectrum who vehemently disagree with me. And this is very, very bad news.
Violence was ingrained into this country’s DNA long before it was even conceived. Just ask its original inhabitants or the descendants of the enslaved people who literally built its foundations. But violence, especially political violence, has risen sharply in the last decades. Charlie Kirk and his ilk were part of a concerted movement that created greater cultural acceptance of violence against those they disagreed with or judged as lesser. But he didn’t deserve a public execution in front of thousands of students and millions of others who saw the footage on their phones.
Just as bad is our desensitization to that routine violence. School and public mass shootings only briefly make the news, crowded out by the latest celebrity scandal within 24 hours. I personally can’t absorb all the pain. So, I often elect to listen to a playlist than read another news story of yet more pointless death. Meanwhile, I subconsciously pray it doesn’t happen to me or my loved ones.
Everywhere around me, people of all political stripes stockpile guns, cosplay the Punisher, and practice room clearing and small unit tactics for the day when they finally get to take their toys out for a countrywide live fire Civil War LARPing game.
“We need a good culling!” they shout. “The other side has it coming for X, Y, and Z past injustices!” They fantasize about finally living out their Call of Duty power fantasies in bargain basement body armor and surplus Kevlar helmets. Because, when the tutorial ends and the real shooting starts, they’ll be the good guys—right?
They don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. Everyone loves playing soldier though fewer people than ever have any direct relationship to the military. Three of my friends were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and if you haven’t had a similar experience, you can’t possibly fathom the personal and communal agony associated with that loss. Their political and societal opinions are completely irrelevant. Only the pain matters. So, if you want a Civil War, go rent the Alex Garland film. Otherwise, fuck off.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention concerns about my personal safety. I’ve received plenty of threats of violence, including death threats, in response to my memes and articles. I even had to coordinate with security after influencers in my own community publicly encouraged their followers to harass me at a public event.
If I pass before my time, it’ll either be from a heat stroke in the mangroves or a red-pilled Kendall bro with a beard and an AR-15. Should the worst happen, many will be sad, including (I assume) most of those reading these words. However, there will also be plenty who will celebrate my death, or at the very least feel that I had it coming. People who disagree with me politically will inevitably post hot takes and memes about me being a turncoat communist or some other dribble. It won’t matter to me. I’ll be dead. Everyone else will feel vindicated, or outraged, or apathetic, the world will keep turning, and I’ll be out of the news cycle in no time.
If you can’t empathize with Kirk’s humanity, if you can’t imagine your adversaries’ schadenfreude should someone you like be assassinated, then at least focus on your self-interest. Mark my words, there will be a backlash to Charlie Kirk’s murder. Our president and his army of alt-right trolls have and will continue to use any excuse to brutally suppress their enemies. If nothing else, Charlie Kirk’s death will unleash far more cruelty than he ever spouted while alive.
I don’t want to live in that society, which is to say, I don’t want to live in this society. Disagreeing with someone, no matter how toxic the discourse, should not be a death sentence for anyone. And yet, now it is, cheered on by millions who feel vindicated, or avenged, or entertained. There will be more deaths, both of those you agree and disagree with. I just pray it ends soon.
If you like our stories, check out The Miami Creation Myth hardcover.
