A shot heard 'round the world

The assassination for Charlie Kirk accelerates more than one alarming trend, as America continues to stumble into the abyss it has been digging for generations

It’s hard to know where to begin.

A writer’s conundrum

I had planned to write today about the anniversary of the attacks on New York and Washington that, 24 years ago, plunged our country into an ignorant spiral of continuing self-destruction & belligerence.

Yesterday’s events, however, threaten to accelerate that spiral. While the assassination of right wing pundit Charlie Kirk pales in actual significance relative to the death of 2,977 New Yorkers 24 years ago, the ultimate results of both events may take disturbingly similar shapes.

One big difference is that Kirk’s assassination happened a generation after Washington’s bipartisan corruption machine weaponized the 9/11 attacks to degrade democracy, dismantle constitutional rights, and enable state violence with impunity. The aftermath of 9/11 was hateful, destructive, and only enhanced and amplified the cycle of violence to which it responded (and also ironically prompted).

In each of those respects, Kirk’s assassination might ultimately make the 9/11 attacks in 2001 pale in comparison.

Long simmering crises

A city that I called home for a decade became a convenient target of our aspiring dictator in the White House this summer. The deployment of federal troops in Washington, DC followed a similar, earlier attack on Los Angeles, and paved the path for the more recent repetition of that pattern in Chicago, where I also lived for 10 years.

Even before Kirk’s assassination, the federal occupations of major cities from coast-to-coast offered disturbing indications of how Trump could mobilize more military assets to suppress dissent, and further destroy whatever remains of our supposed democracy.

No city in America is safe. And while some voices claim that these paramilitary interventions are justified by supposed crime, the most apparent crimes are those by state actors disregarding human & civil rights, as well as longstanding legal limits constraining their powers.

Meanwhile, Trump opportunistically used powers pioneered by his predecessors, particularly Obama, to escalate a pattern of arbitrary lethal state violence. The president absurdly claimed that last week’s strike targeting a Venezuelan boat—without either charge or trial—was taken in self-defense, even though the boat appeared to have turned around before being incinerated in a drone strike. This week, a Republican Senator confirmed that the boat was struck by a drone, making even more painfully clear the connection between Obama’s legacy and Trump’s weaponization of it.

That pattern of casually embracing violence blew back this week, with the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

We reap what they’ve sown: international double standards

Some have noted the irony of someone who publicly preached division falling victim to it. It should come as no surprise to witness Kirk fall to the same social ruptures that he built a career out of stoking. Kirk relentlessly punched down at Blacks and other minorities, immigrants, LGBTQ people, and others.

All that said, his assassination remains tragic—both because Kirk himself was non-violent, and also particularly of what his assassination will invite. (I’ll return to that theme below.)

Other observers have noted the profound irony in so many right wing voices suddenly claiming to care about political violence, after having disregarded—for years—political violence in any number of arenas.

Most obvious among them is an ongoing genocide in Gaza enabled by American support. Many of those who today voice concerns about political violence within the U.S. relegated themselves to casting stones from a glass house by ignoring the political violence that Washington continues to enable from Gaza to Iran, Qatar, and far beyond that region.

Is there any reason that Kirk’s life should be worth more than those of the tens of thousands of Gazans who Israel has murdered in the past two years alone? Five Gazans died of preventable malnutrition on the same day that Kirk was killed.

Why does the world know none of their names?

We reap what they’ve sown: domestic double standards

Double standards emerge not only in Kirk’s supporters ignoring political violence abroad while braying about it here at home. They have chosen to disregard—and even outrageously invite—political violence within the U.S., as well.

At least one of them serves in the U.S. Senate. Another is among the world’s richest people and owns a global social media network.

In the wake of Kirk’s death, Elon Musk posted a tweet reading, “If they won’t leave us in peace, then our choice is to fight or die.”

Who is the “they” towards whom Musk invited violence? Our president wasted no time declaring that it is “the radical left” that is “directly responsible for the terrorism we are seeing in our country today.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) responded to news of Kirk’s murder by decrying “a cowardly act of violence” targeting someone he described as an “American patriot” and “inspiration to countless young people.” Yet, when an elected policymaker—who at the time served as the Speaker of the House in the Minnesota state legislature—was assassinated three months ago, Lee’s empathy was strikingly absent. Rather than share condolences, he chose instead to irresponsibly spread conspiracy theories falsely (and inexplicably) blaming the attack on unspecified “Marxists.”

The June 2025 murder of Melissa Hortman invites further examination in the wake of Kirk’s assassination three months later. While Kirk was the only person hurt in the attack targeting him, Hortman was killed alongside her husband, while another state Senator, John Hoffman, and his wife were also injured.

Why does the death of a right wing organizer warrant more attention than the deaths of an elected policymaker serving as a state’s Speaker of the House, and her husband? Most of the figures who have called for retribution targeting the Left, for instance, had little to say when an even worse attack caused even more death and assaulted democracy even more directly.

Hortman’s assassination was not the first example, either.

Gabby Giffords was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006, and represented her Arizona district until an assassination attempt in 2011—which killed a federal judge and five others, including a 9 year-old recently elected Class President at her elementary school, while injuring over a dozen others—left Giffords disabled. Worst yet, the attack on Giffords appeared to have been invited by right wing figures, including Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

As much as anyone in America, Rep. Giffords holds the moral high ground to reflect on yesterday’s events. She observed this morning that:

Our stories are unique, but what Charlie Kirk, President Trump, Melissa Hortman and I all have in common is that someone who wanted to kill us had a gun.

We can and should talk about political violence, and its toxic relationship to political rhetoric. We can and must talk about social media’s role in these moments. We all, as individual Americans, need to do a better job considering our words and their impact.

Giffords went on to argue that “anyone who responds to preventable tragedies like this—tragedies that over time begin to erode the very fabric of our country—by refusing to face the problem of gun violence and crime head-on is missing the point.”

She also correctly observed that “Americans of both political parties desperately want this violence to end,” and then noted that “88% of Republicans support background checks on all gun sales, 75% support laws to get untraceable ghost guns off the streets, and a surprising 81% support requiring a license to own a gun (just like Americans need licenses to drive cars). Yet somehow Congress refuses to act.”

Many have noted the irony of Kirk being shot at the precise moment that he was defending gun violence and arguing against the sensible limits that, as Giffords explained today, could protect lives. Kirk said, “I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”

Beyond the tragic irony of a public figure effectively inviting his own assassination, how Kirk imagined the utility of the Second Amendment offers a lesson in itself.

What does the Second Amendment mean, anyway?

I have argued in favor of Second Amendment rights as a check on government tyranny, while recognizing that the constitutional right to bear weapons may have been shorn from its original purpose by events including the militarization of domestic police.

[Looking back on that article, I must admit one error: I evaluated the Oathkeepers based on their words, before their subsequent acts revealed those words to be self-serving and insincere. In line with my longstanding aspiration to build a left-right alliance to challenge the bipartisan corruption that dominates Washington, I had at one point envisioned the Oathkeepers as potential libertarian allies to intersectional movements, before coming to learn that their primary commitments were political, rather than constitutional.]

The Second Amendment was intended by the Founders to offer a constitutional escape hatch, a check on government tyranny should the mechanisms within the Constitution fail. Yet a textual understanding of the Second Amendment offers no such opportunity today: the only predictable outcomes from flexing one’s right to bear arms include the right to be shot by a SWAT team—or, alternatively, the opportunity to become a right-wing influencer aligned with Charlie Kirk.

To offer a meaningful check on tyranny today, the Second Amendment must be interpreted to mean more than simply carrying a weapon.

In the digital era, preserving the anti-tyranny function of the Second Amendment would require interpreting it to include a right to exfiltrate data from government sources. That would entail an actual right to resistance of the sort that could actually offer a check on tyrannical government.

Instead, we enjoy the worst of both worlds: a functionally useless “right” that offers no protection from government excesses, while ultimately empowering mass murderers, and placing children at increasing risk everywhere from their homes to their schools.

Violence only further degrades democracy in America

Many have noted how the right wing will likely seize on Kirk’s assassination as a pretext to escalate and expand the demagoguery to which Los Angeles and DC have already been subjected. What is happening in Chicago now could become a template for the rest of the country.

The right wing feeds on perceived marginalization. That was among the themes that drove many of his supporters to rally behind Trump and other proponents of the so-called “white replacement theory.” Kirk’s assassination will ultimately empower those narratives, driving supporters of figures like Kirk to see themselves as embattled and increasingly at risk.

His apologists have been keen to emphasize that Kirk himself was non-violent, and that his activism took the form of debates mostly on college campuses.

While I have a little sympathy for his views, I do appreciate Kirk’s method, having worked using similar strategies myself in the past. Like Kirk, I was once a student organizer. Like him, I’ve spoken at dozens of colleges and universities. Like him, I’ve been threatened with violence in retaliation for my political speech.

In fact, I vaguely recall speaking at a Turning Points USA event (at a college in the Midwest sometime in the 2010s that I can’t seem to pin down) to share my concerns about government surveillance. Not at all ironically, the students and professors mobilized by Kirk’s network shared many of my concerns.

That method—reasoned discourse, and the exchange of ideas—often leads so-called “unholy bedfellows” to find common ground. It is also incompatible with violence.

The violence and state repression that Kirk’s assassination has already invited promises only to further close the space for that exchange. I don’t mourn the loss of Kirk’s voice, but I absolutely fear what it foreshadows: calcification of political division, the normalization of domestic political violence, and the expansion of federal occupation far beyond the first cities (LA, DC, and Chicago) forced to endure it.

Whatever ideology motivated Kirk’s assassin, the act will only accelerate the consolidation of fascism and drive the stake already stabbing the heart of democracy even deeper.

I’ve seen some voices celebrate Kirk’s murder. They are unfortunately confused. A public figure falling prey to his own creation is ironic, and might offer some basis for schadenfreude. But these events—and what they place at stake—are too important to settle for mere self-gratification.

The “other side” losing a voice might seem like a victory to frustrated people eager for long overdue change. But remember what the Pentagon learned in Iraq (after forgetting the same lesson learned in Vietnam): killing one antagonist only ensures that 50 more will take their place.

Ideas can’t be killed. Killing people who promote them only further empowers those ideas.

Meanwhile, the continuing degradation of democracy leaves us all with less room to advocate. State violence responding to Kirk’s assassination will harm everyone, including the legions of Americans who wish for a sane future.

Kirk was not one of us. But celebrating his assassination is both senseless, and also self-marginalizing.

At the end of the day, Kirk’s assassination could offer an important historical reminder: political violence is even more American than apple pie. Anyone who forgot what happened to MLK (and the movement he helped lead) might find a great deal to learn from his example.

Paid subscribers can access an additional section exploring my thoughts on the complex relationship between yesterday’s events and those that made Luigi Mangione into a folk hero.

How to betray a hero

Few sectors better understand heroism—and how to monetize it—better than Hollywood. From 1993’s “Falling Down” starring Michael Douglas, to a powerful new film titled “Straw,” Hollywood has long recognized the capacity for struggling Americans to find heroes in those who say, “enough is enough. I’m not going to take this anymore.”

Last year, a plot more compelling than any Hollywood drama gripped the country, much of which celebrated as a CEO of an effectively murderous health insurance company met his end at the hands of a telegenic and seemingly thoughtful accused assassin.

Luigi Mangione inspired the country and became a popular hero for allegedly holding accountable someone whose position placed him beyond the reach of law, economics, or even culture.

But by becoming a hero through political violence, Mangione may have glorified an example that becomes increasingly horrific as it expands.

How many people are taking inspiration from worthwhile heroes who deserve celebration, if not emulation? I don’t hope that anyone else follows his lead, but the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell offers an important and compelling contrast to acts of violence targeting perceived opponents.

Knowing how the state and right wing will respond, do people who repeat their acts undermine what both Aaron and Luigi stood for?