Yesterday, conservative influencer and activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University. Love or hate his politics, such acts of political violence are absolutely unacceptable and should be condemned by everyone, everywhere, without qualifications or reservations.
And while such condemnations will continue to pour in from folks all over the ideological spectrum, we will hear leaders (like Speaker Johnson on TV last night) and commoners alike throw out a common refrain in response to political violence: “This isn’t who we are. We, as Americans, are better than this.”
I have a slight, yet critical edit to the statement. “This shouldn’t be who we are. We, as Americans, should be better than this.”
But, at this moment and throughout our history, this is more than a small bit of who we are. (Don’t believe me, read this book.)
Our history is littered with political violence, and to pretend that assassinations (and their attempts) were left in the chaos of the 1960s is a unhelpful and dangerous misinterpretation of who and what we are today. It’s revisionist history and forgets the very real and very recent political violence in Arizona, and Pennsylvania, and Minnesota, and New York and on and on and on.
Violence and shootings—political and otherwise—happen too often, are far too common to claim otherwise. We need to be honest about it. We see it daily; we’re desensitized to it. Rhetoric of war becomes common, and infiltrates our thoughts of our fellow Americans.
And worse, we—even just subconsciously—filter our responses to these acts through our partisan lenses, look for someone on the other side to blame, start saying “they” to separate ourselves from the each other, and search for reasons for why this act on this person, is somehow, someway justified.
It’s not. It never should be. And if that’s your immediate response, you need to check yourself, too.
We should be better than this. And it’s up to each of us, each and everyday, to bring our empathy to every interaction. Disagree, yes. Vehemently. Our country depends on it.
But, let’s not pretend that this isn’t who we are. And let’s work to be better.
