On Madness, and a Moment of Pause.
This last week was marked by a tragedy of epic proportions. One week ago today, Charlie Kirk, right-wing provocateur and leader of Turning Point USA, was shot and killed at an event at Utah Valley University.
The tragedy is evident on several fronts: first and foremost, it is a tragedy for his wife and two young children, who are left behind. No family deserves to be subjected to the horror of seeing a loved one gunned down before their eyes. Political violence is a tragic failure of our Democratic system. These are wounds that will be felt for years to come and may, in fact, never be healed.
It is also tragic to witness a democracy in freefall. The Trump administration, in an entirely predictable fashion, seized the opportunity to leverage this heinous event for political gain and as a pretext for the suppression of their political opponents.
There is much that we do not yet know about the shooter or his true motivations. Nevertheless, the president and his sycophants have concocted, without credible evidence, a broad, left-wing conspiracy theory and declared that they will investigate and take punitive action against their political opponents. Please make no mistake, this is a bold-faced ploy by the administration to expand its power and to suppress dissent. This breakdown of our Democratic system may have ramifications for years, if not generations to come.
Equally tragic, if not more so, is the intentional whitewashing of reality. This is clearly evidenced in the torrent of propaganda canonizing Charlie Kirk as martyr or saint. This is brought to us by the same folks who are demanding the removal of references to the horrors of slavery from museums and national parks.
Charlie Kirk is no saint. His own inflammatory and bigoted rhetoric – of which there are far too many examples to list here – bears witness against him. He was not, as New York Times opinion columnist Ezra Klein so wrongheadedly asserted, "Practicing politics the right way.” Mr. Klein does lots of excellent work, but in this matter, I wholeheartedly disagree with him. Kirk claimed to be fighting for Christian values, while simultaneously arguing for the diminishment, if not outright elimination, of those not explicitly aligned with his views. This hypocrisy is also a tragedy.
Perhaps this was best captured by Howard- John Wesley, Pastor of Alfred St. Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia. In a clip from a sermon that was widely circulated on social media, Wesley, while acknowledging the profound and unwarranted personal tragedy that had befallen the Kirk family, also pointed out the apparent contradictions.
"I'm overwhelmed, hearing people with selective rage who are mad about Charlie Kirk but didn't give a damn about Melissa Hortman and her husband when they were shot down in their home…Tell me I ought to have compassion for the death of a man who had no respect for my own life,"
The clip ends with Wesley saying, "I am sorry, but there is nowhere in the Bible where we are taught to honor evil. How you die does not redeem how you lived. You do not become a hero in your death when you were a weapon of the enemy in your life.”
Let me say once again, the murder of Charlie Kirk is a tragedy on multiple levels, and a betrayal of the Democratic values we say that we believe in. Those values are equally betrayed by the actions of an administration that views this moment as a pretext for expanding its power and suppressing those who might oppose it.
Healing will not come instantly, and it will not come without struggle. But in the meantime, let us consider Pastor Wesley's words and allow them to give us what we desperately need: A moment of pause.
Until next time,
Ray