Why the Charlie Kirk assassination marked a turning point—and what the aftermath says about America’s willingness to destroy itself

As anyone who follows me knows, Charlie Kirk was not my cup of tea. But I weep over gun violence all the time. I weep when kindergartners are slaughtered and when a 14-year-old was shot and killed by a 16-year-old in my DC neighborhood in the middle of the day.

The fact that Kirk supported gun rights and said things I find abhorrent doesn’t make him less human or the violence less shocking to witness. The fact that he was shot in the throat while articulating his beliefs—beliefs I don’t share—was chilling.

This doesn’t mean I expect others to weep or mourn someone they found threatening. They shouldn’t be expected to remain silent about their feelings. That’s a demand being pushed by key figures on the right, who are talking about the importance of free speech when it comes to anyone they agree with, and overtly trying to silence those who don’t share their views.

I think I wept not just for a young man’s life cut short so violently, but also for what it says about the state of America and where we are headed. I felt I was witnessing something that we would look back on as turning point, and not a good one.1

Many people are angry, asking why people are talking about this so much, even when they don’t typically talk about politics?

It’s because this is different.

When someone is killed for the words they spoke, it’s not the same as other kinds of violence. When that someone is as prominent and well known and close to the president of the United States as Charlie Kirk was, it’s different.

It’s also different because we have footage of it happening in a very graphic manner. It’s why the murder of George Floyd captured more attention than other murders of Black people at the hands of police officers.

I’m not saying these things are morally different. A life is a life; a murder is a murder.

I’m saying they don’t mean the same thing to the collective.

This feels like an event we’ll all remember, not just for the murder, but also for the aftermath.

If you don’t know what I mean by that, you should read “Things Are Different Now2” by historian

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I can say, for my part, I have mostly stayed away from writing about politics except when I feel I have something to add that isn’t being said by other people. I have tended to focus on moments that feel pivotal and say something about what’s happening more broadly in US culture.

This feels like one of those moments.

Something that really struck me in the week after the killing, was watching how insanely adults were behaving online. It’s clear that so many Americans who claim to be informed remain oblivious to the outside forces manipulating public opinion and keeping everyone jacked up on rage. They are willing puppets in a dangerous performance. They are not interested in making things better; they just pour gasoline on the already raging fire.

I watched people with major platforms engaging with and reacting to accounts that probably aren’t even real people, or they are real people being paid to play a part. I saw media outlets quoting people on social media based on nothing more than a handle. There’s no due diligence to confirm the person they are quoting even exists or is expressing a real opinion.

There are countries that want to see America implode, and they’ve weaponized trolling and bots to sow division. The ultimate goal is to destroy the United States, and so many Americans continue to choose to opt into this manufactured rage-a-thon. As the Associated Press reported: “Foreign disinformation about Charlie Kirk’s killing seeks to widen US divisions.”3

Conservatives were raging at liberals “celebrating” Kirk’s death, even though liberals from Ezra Klein to Barack Obama to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were forcefully condemning Kirk’s assassination. Liberals were piling on other liberals who were visibly shaken, even shedding tears, over the video of the assassination essentially branding them traitors to the cause.

We know that social media companies profit from pushing outrage and controversy, keeping everyone in a constant state of terror and anger, and following the Kirk assassination this was turbo charged. I rarely use Instagram, and when I do, I’m not interested in political content, so the algorithm doesn’t feed me that kind of material.

But after the assassination, my feed was flooded with rage bait from both left and right responding to Kirk’s killing.

No matter how much I scrolled, I could not get out of it.

I believe most Americans don’t behave or think the way people with online platforms do, in part because they aren’t spending all their time on social media where they would be bombarded with misinformation and trolling designed to put them in a state of constant rage. Most have more nuanced views and more compassion than many of those holding the microphones. Unfortunately, in America’s political debate arena, people are rewarded for being extremely binary and even cruel.

I wonder if the public will ever wake up to this reality and stop participating. There actually is a way to stay engaged, and even be angry at what is happening, without demonizing and dehumanizing other people. Trust me, the people doing the real work to try and save America are not online screaming at people. A lot of them don’t even have social media accounts.

Personally, I scroll past anyone selling rage as fast as possible—even when I agree with their underlying principles.

I don’t want to listen to people on the right talking about waging holy war against liberals for the act of one person, and I don’t want to hear people on the left attacking a 21-year-old podcast host for crying when he saw the murder video of someone he regularly debated.

I suspect that for most people reading this, your experience was similar to mine. When you actually spoke to other people about this horrific event, most were pretty measured in their responses. Not all conservatives want to wage holy war, and not all liberals think Kirk deserved to die because of his views on gun rights. But you could be confused about this if you spend any time online.

The disconnect between online discourse and real human conversation has never been starker. Maybe the solution isn’t fixing the algorithm or stopping the bots, especially since it’s out of our control.

Maybe the solution is simply remembering that the person screaming the loudest is rarely speaking for the rest of us.

Recommend Changing The Channel with Kirsten Powers to your readers

New York Times bestselling author Kirsten Powers offers fresh thinking about how we can make big changes in our lives, communities and country.