When will we act?
By Kevin Ellis, on Conflict of Interest
First a couple of caveats.
I didn’t know Charlie Kirk. I didn’t follow him or read/watch him.
I did watch the video of his assassination. It ruined me for a few days emotionally.
I waited a few days to watch and read the reaction to his killing. I did this in part to resist snap judgments. Was the shooter a right-winger or a left-winger? Was he an incel, fueled by the on-line rage machine that we have allowed to fester in this country?
And then I realized those questions are not the point.
Put aside the crazies for the moment. The MAGA types calling for a civil war against the left. The left-wing crazies cheering Kirk’s death. I’m not even interested in the journalistic exploration of whether Kirk’s views played a role in his killing. There is plenty of time to examine his views – none of which I agree with.
What I do know is that Kirk is dead. And so is Melissa Hortman, the late speaker of the House in Minnesota. Paul Pelosi, the husband of Nancy Pelosi, is still recovering from being attacked with a hammer in his home. JFK was shot in broad daylight. Bobby Kennedy is dead. So is Medgar Evers, shot in the back in his driveway. So is Martin Luther King. An attempted assassination of Trump – and the spasmatic aftermath – missed by an inch.
Also dead are hundreds of school children, high schoolers, college kids, killed in what should be the sacred space of school buildings and churches.
The list goes on and on.
What makes the death of Charlie Kirk different? Two things I think.
First – it was filmed live and immediately played online around the world. The deaths of the others named above were not filmed. Any footage was grainy and easy to ignore. But you can’t ignore the Kirk killing. It is gruesome. It affects you. Watching it, you knew he would not survive. Walter Cronkite would not have aired it.
Second, the MAGA/Trump media machine now dominates the social media world in which we now exist and communicate. As leading Democrats called for calm and condemned the political violence, leading Republicans, led by the president of the United States, called for a crackdown on free speech and an assault on fundamental freedoms. And that call was magnified until up was down and down was up.
Given the chance to call for calm and a vigorous debate about the country’s future, Trump endorsed the pursuit and suppression of speech he doesn’t like, groups he doesn’t like and people he doesn’t like. The result was Disney firing Kimmel, the folks at Williams College lowering flags to half mast, and a promised attack on what Trump called the left-wing lunatic groups that are responsible for Kirk’s death. The Trump lawsuit against the NY Times was thrown out of court by a federal judge who said it made a mockery of the court system. And yet the chill continues.
This despite most political leaders from everywhere condemning the Kirk killing and calling for a stop to political violence – the killing of people because you disagree with them. I join them.
We are a violent country, a violent people. Our way of government and Constitution have kept our worst impulses at bay (somewhat) for 250 years. Violence was an aberration. Now it feels like the norm.
The list is long and getting longer. How far back do we go?
A well-known member of the Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, receives so many death threats that she needs extra security to get from the car to her apartment in DC. Imagine living like that.
I host a radio show. I now think of my personal safety and that of my family before speaking my mind and leaving the radio station. Will they come to my home?
The MAGA crowd has successfully, against all logic, positioned their leaders as the victims of politically correct censorship. I find it really hard to understand that. Charlie Kirk spoke all the time about the importance of freedom of speech. He had a huge platform. So does RFK Jr. Trump has the biggest platform. And yet he complains of censorship.
Trump is pushing the attorney general to go after the people he dislikes. Expect to see IRS audits of all sorts of non-profit political organizations. The ICE arrests and kidnappings will expand into our political discussion. No one will be safe.
What all this brings up in me is sadness at this realization, this reminder, of who we are. There will be 30 gun deaths in England this year. There are 30 per day in this country.
And what happened after Kirk should concern us all. The algorithms on Twitter, Discord, Facebook and elsewhere – designed to enrage and divide – lit up with anger from all sides.
These platforms, completely unregulated and whose owners are now the wealthiest people in the world, allow this. It is their business model. This is gas on a fire of hate and division, especially for young men, who wallow in the bowels of these online communities and work themselves into a lather that convinces them that they need to do something heroic to right a wrong. It’s in their head; not real. And this is a tea party compared to what AI is bringing. When will we do something about this?
I want to mention three political leaders who did the right thing in the wake of Kirk killing. Utah Governor Spencer Cox urged everyone to care more about each other and to look in the mirror.
Sen. Bernie Sanders spent four minutes urging a stop to political violence, extolling the virtues of free speech and argument. Indeed Charlie Kirk – even if you disagreed with him – which I did – took his views to college campuses. He was good at what he did. He had an audience. People liked what he was selling.
And lastly, Vermont Governor Phil Scott.
“Our country continues to become more fractured, more violent, and more partisan – and we should all feel a sense of a responsibility to change that.
“There is no doubt, our nation is broken. But, we’ve experienced difficult situations before and have shown just how powerful our country is when we are united, listen to the perspectives of others, treat each other with respect, and rise above the dangerous rhetoric we’re seeing more often.
“We must strive to find common ground, at the most basic human level, so we can engage in the free exchange of conflicting ideas and the open debate that we desperately need to solve problems and help people.”
We had best follow the lead of cooler heads at this moment. Take a look in the mirror and resist the urge to say something crazy. Do the reading. Be informed. Listen and talk to people you might disagree with.
I’ve done two things:
- I watched/listened Robert Kennedy’s speech in 1968 after the death of Martin Luther King. He spoke of the “mindless menace of violence’’ in this country.
- I invited the chairs of the Vermont Democratic and Republican party on my Vermont radio show to discuss political violence. I suspected that if they saw and heard each other, they might dial down their own rhetoric. The Republican accepted. The Democrat did not. The Republican agreed to stand on the Statehouse steps, join hands with opponents and call for an end to all political violence.
Here’s a link to the Robert Kennedy speech.
It brings me to tears every time, knowing that nothing has really changed. Until we get a handle on technology and stop allowing these tech oligarchs to sell us rage and violence on Google, Twitter, Facebook and other places, it will only get worse.
After my radio show, on Twitter, somebody called me a “dirty dog’’ because they disagreed with me. As Robert Kennedy said of violence in 1968 – “And yet it goes on and on and one in this country of ours. Why?’’
Three months later he was dead.