The Virus of Violence

Mourning the death of Charlie Kirk, Melissa Hortman, and the children of Annunciation Catholic School.

America is no longer on the path toward political violence and vitriol—we are already on it. The question is not whether America can turn away from this scourge, but whether we can turn back entirely. If we cannot, this country will continue to fade—slowly, and loudly—into itself.

We cannot be vague about the forces of domestic evil that seek to tear our common America into separate Americas, where one side commits all evil and the other all good. These ideologues exist on both the far left and the far right, and they represent much of what is wrong with modern America. The far right embraces its hatred and robs our American heritage of its valor to promote division. The far left believes that a moralistic claim to America permits violence and lawlessness with righteous impunity. These camps are led by figures who see our country as a rotting carcass to pick at, grabbing the last stringy pieces of flesh for their own benefit. They have declared war on America, and we must declare war on them.

Our war must be fought with kindness and courage. We must dismantle the noxious infrastructure of outrage and lies that pulls the American people away from one another. Social media corporations have wiped their hands of our blood with their dollars and fomented the greatest divide this country has seen since the Civil War. They have platformed extremism, given credence to hatred, and stoked violence. To prevent another assassination like that of Charlie Kirk or Melissa Hortman, we must, once and for all, push for real regulation and verification on social media platforms. Congress must require these companies, like Meta and X, to implement identity verification for all users. The privilege of anonymity has been contorted into a defense of endless violence—it must end. With real identity verification, we can remove bad actors who stoke division and prosecute those who profit from the dissolution of this union.

Our media apparatus has a responsibility to act in good faith for a struggling democracy. I was angered to see The New York Times promote the ramblings of extremists like Representative Nancy Mace and ignore the broad majority of members of Congress—Republicans and Democrats alike—who mourned the death of Charlie Kirk. A free press has the right to report on what it wants, when it wants, but our largest outlets should recognize that a free press is a privilege of a functioning democracy. In the wake of national tragedies, journalists should be aware of their substantial role in determining which conversations exist and how they unfold over time.

It profoundly scares me, as someone who expects to hold a role as public and partisan as Charlie Kirk’s, to see the glee many on the left expressed over his death. First, it is embarrassing and pathetic. Celebrating slaughter reflects the same inner evil that so many on the left claim to find disgusting. I do not believe this celebration stems from deep psychological morbidity, but rather from the hyper-online left’s role-playing of a coherent ideology. The belief that because someone does evil they deserve evil is, in itself, a damning indictment of one’s own goodness. Most of these people are children without real beliefs or values, so I will spare them the worst of my criticism, but I will not hide my pity for the cruelty and embarrassing naïveté they display.

We must also remember that political tragedy is not an excuse to attack political opponents in retribution or to target unrelated individuals irrespective of ideology. If President Trump, as he has done in the past, uses this national tragedy to advance his own attack on this same America, we must resist with courage. I have faith that almost every American can recognize that the killing of Charlie Kirk is abhorrent, and that his killing does not grant the President license to go after Democratic organizations. Political violence can serve as an accelerant to authoritarianism, but the United States is not on the verge of totalitarianism or dictatorship.

We will get the leaders we deserve. If we are a country where sharing your views is an invitation to lead in your neck, then we are not a country at all. We will be under the despotic rule of extremist, anti-American individuals whose intelligence is so low, and morality so nonexistent, that they think they can control the virus of violence. They cannot. I mourn Charlie Kirk’s death as a fellow American, just as I mourn Melissa Hortman and the children of Annunciation Catholic School. For their sake, we must begin the assault on these traitorous ideals, whatever their ideology.