When I stopped by lunch on Wednesday at his Anaheim home, it wasn’t the greeting I had hoped for from my dad.
“Who is Charlie Kirk? ”
Papi still has a flip phone so he hasn’t sunk into a podcast like endless streams of YouTube and his friends. His news source is Univision and Mexico’s Oldies Station’s best breaking news at Mexican Oldies Station, far from Kirk’s conservative supernova.
“Political activist,” I replied. “why?”
“The news said.”
Papi watered the roses while he went to his laptop to learn more. My stomach twitched and my heart sank as I was talking to a student at Utah Valley University. What made me even more sick was that even if law enforcement hadn’t identified the suspect, everyone thought they knew who did it.
The conservatives denounced liberalism for demonizing one of their heroes and vowed to vengeance. Some progressives argued that Kirk came because of his long history of his jammed Cen style on issues such as positive behavior, trans people, and Islam. Both sides predicted an escalation of political violence following Kirk’s murder. Of course, it was fueled to the other side.
So I closed my laptop and checked my dad. He moved on to cleaning the pool.
“So who was he?” Papi asked again. By then, Donald Trump’s text messages had been streamed by my colleagues. I gave my father a brief sketch of Kirk’s life, and he frowned when I said that the commentator supported Trump’s dream of exile.
But hatred was not in Papi’s mind.
“It’s sad that he was killed,” Papi said. “May God bless him and his family.”
“Is politics going to get worse now?” he added.
That’s a question my friends and family have been asking me since Kirk’s assassination. I’m the political animal in their circle and the one who bores everyone at a party while I’m yapping about Trump and government Gavin Newsom while I want to talk about the Dodgers and the assailants. They are too focused on raising their families and trying to thrive during these difficult times.
They have long crossed the partisan disparities in this country because they work and function well with people they disagree with. They are tired of being told to dislike ideological differences and to blindly worship people and causes. They may have never heard of Kirk before his assassination, but now they are worried about the next thing. Because this prominent killing is usually a precursor to the bad times ahead.
I wasn’t naive enough to think that killing someone as divisive as Kirk would unite Americans, denounce political terrorism and build a kind country. I knew each was embarrassing about a terrible take and that Trump wouldn’t even pretend to be united.
But the collective trash can fire we got was worse than I could have imagined.
Conservatives boast that there hasn’t been a riot, as happened after the 2020 George Floyd murder, but they are primarily silent as the loudest of Kirk’s supporters vows to crush the left just once. The Trump administration has already pledged to crack down on the left in Kirk’s name, and GOP leaders have not complained. People have lost their jobs and his fans are rooting for the Cancelled Cavalcade.
Meanwhile, the progressive is blazing to the right, but again. They don’t understand why they stay up all over the country for those who have been cast for so long as white nationalists, fascists and even worse. They reject those present as paranoid cultists, further strengthening the minds of both sides. They have posted Kirk’s past statements on social media as evidence that he is correct about him, like posting papers to damn Mississippi.
I was not paying close attention to Kirk. This is because he had no direct connection to Southern California politics. I knew him and I disliked his harmful comments that sometimes caught my attention. Even if his style is more than Ronald Reagan vs Walter Mondale (satisfied Kirk’s college tour), he is grateful that he is willing to discuss his views with critics.
I understand why his fans are saddened and why Trump’s enemy is sick, which appears to think that only conservatives are victims of political violence and that the Liberals can only be perpetrators. We also know that the same thing happens when a progressive hero forbids by heaven, suffers from Kirk’s tragic end.
We witness the play of partisan passion along with the greatest losers of our democracy and the silent majority of Americans like my father who want to live life. Crying or criticism – it’s either your right. But don’t drag the entire country into your culture war. Those who sail between Scylla and Charybdis on the right and left want to sail into a more subdued sea. Turned Kirk’s murder into modern feet. When is the Sumter Chaos guaranteed?
Politically, we have never answered my father’s question about the following for us. Since then, I will continue to reread what Kirk said about empathy. He debated the concept in a 2022 episode of his eponymous show as a “new age term that’s causing a lot of damage.”
Kirk was wrong about a lot of things, but in particular it was wrong. Empathy means we try to understand each other’s experiences. Instead of agreeing, not accepting, but understanding. Empathy connects us with others in the hopes of making something bigger and better.
It’s something I can feel Kirk’s loved ones and no matter how much I dislike them or their opinions, I don’t want his destiny to anyone. That’s the only thing that connects me to Kirk. He loved this country just as much as I did.
Preaching empathy may be a fool’s errand. But when we drill a hole deeper into the silo than ever before, that’s the only way. We need to understand why we want the other side of illness, why we are talking about such things, that we all destined for everyone.
Kirk was not a saint, but if his assassination takes a collective deep breath on us and understand how to fix this broken nation together, he really died the death of the martian.
