The political assassination of Charlie Kirk continues to impact America.  Charlie’s conservative nonprofit organization, Turning Point USA, has seen a surge in membership.  There are reports across the country of increased church attendance, as lapsed congregants contemplate the sacrifice Charlie made to spread a Christian message.  Conservative and Christian Americans are expressing themselves more boldly on social media platforms and college campuses.

An equally important, though darkly troubling, consequence of his murder has been the deluge of mockery and hatred from leftists celebrating Charlie’s death.  Antifa-aligned groups show up on college campuses to attack Turning Point staff and prevent students from hearing Charlie’s arguments.  Prominent Democrats continue to pretend that violent leftist rhetoric had nothing to do with his murder.  Celebrity “journalists” defend Charlie’s assassination by not-so-subtly suggesting that Charlie’s willingness to debate a range of political and moral issues with Americans of all political backgrounds constituted some kind of impermissible “hate” or linguistic “violence.”

In a recent interview with Democrat Senator John Fetterman, leftist propagandist Katie Couric tried really hard to blame Charlie for his own murder.  “Did you have any issues, now in hindsight, over some of the things that Charlie Kirk said?” Couric asked Fetterman.  When the senator responded with compassion for Charlie’s family and pointed out that “engaging in debate would never justify what’s happened,” Couric nonetheless insisted, “I think some people might say Charlie Kirk’s rhetoric was extreme. ... People think his words lead to violence.”  

Breaking news, Katie: During the height of the civil rights movement, people worried that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words would lead to violence, too.  His assassination did not dispel the truth of his message.  The same is true of Charlie.

When famous “reporters” such as Couric so conspicuously work to justify a leftist-inspired political assassination, non-leftists pay attention.  As one social media account posted, “Charlie was a moderate Christian conservative.  If Katie thinks he ‘deserved’ this because of his beliefs, she thinks we ALL deserve the same thing.”  A lot of non-leftist Americans have realized over the last two months that leftists want them dead.  

For the last ten years, they’ve watched Antifa domestic terrorists burn down businesses, threaten drivers, and perpetrate all kinds of violence against random American citizens.  Seeing this organized terrorism on computer screens, many non-leftists could effectively compartmentalize these incidents of violence and destruction as the actions of revolutionary Marxists and militant Democrats. 

After Charlie’s assassination, however, non-leftists witnessed the publicized glee of ordinary Democrats across the country.  Teachers, nurses, and even therapists felt no shame in expressing happiness over Charlie’s murder.  Government bureaucrats laughed about Charlie’s death without any fear that they might lose their jobs.  A music instructor in Pennsylvania recently posted a video in which she cruelly gives Charlie’s wife, Erika, “acting notes” so that the widow’s grief will appear more “convincing.”  These psychopathic jeers have continued for two whole months. 

Rather than being horrified at the public responses of so many leftist Americans to the political assassination of Charlie Kirk, Katie Couric apparently believes that Charlie deserved his fate.  When such a famous corporate news face seems genuinely amenable to assassinating Americans for their political speech, even people who normally ignore politics notice how dangerously divided the country has become.

For non-political, non-leftist Americans, Charlie’s murder has been an exclamation point to the steady rise of organized political violence during the last decade.  After a deranged leftist tried to assassinate an entire baseball team of Republicans from the House and Senate in 2017, non-political Americans hoped that the shocking event would help to cool the temperature in Washington.  Just as soon as Democrat Party leaders did a little bipartisan kumbaya routine for the cameras, however, we got the Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots of 2020.  

Even though those violent riots killed several dozen Americans and caused more property damage than any other insurrection in U.S. history, the Democrat Party euphemistically defended the mayhem and bloodshed as a “summer of love” for Americans’ civil rights.  While cities burned, the corporate news media warned Americans that the violence would get much worse unless Joe Biden “won” the 2020 election.  In this way, “journalists” and politicians openly threatened Americans as they headed to the polls.

After claiming the presidency, Democrats did not let up.  Instead, they used the DOJ and FBI to hunt down and harass political opponents.  Democrat-engineered lawfare that had been ramping up since Obama was in the White House went into overdrive as leftists persecuted non-leftists with abandon.  Aside from years of politically motivated prosecutions, however, Democrats continued to call non-leftist Americans “fascists” and “Nazis.”  By 2024, it was little surprise to anyone paying attention that leftist-inspired assassins would attempt to murder President Trump.  

What was a surprise for many non-political Americans, however, was that such near-historic assassination attempts did not sufficiently convince Democrats that their violent rhetoric had become unarguably dangerous for the nation.  Within moments of the attempted assassination of President Trump in Pennsylvania last summer, Democrat politicians and their allies in the press were already downplaying the event or pretending that the shooting had been faked (even as fire chief Corey Comperatore lay dead).  Rather than taking a moment to consider how close the country had come to a potentially civil war-triggering murder of a major national figure, leftists publicly regretted that the assassin had failed.  Random leftists took to social media platforms to complain about the shooter’s aim.

After all the years of Democrat riots, lawfare, and violence, the near-murder of President Trump reminded non-leftist voters what was at stake in the 2024 election.  Even then, however, the average non-political American tried to mentally separate the attempted murder of a national politician from the way ordinary leftists viewed ordinary non-leftists in the United States.  American politics, many told themselves, had gotten entirely out of hand, but surely cooler heads would eventually prevail.  

Charlie Kirk’s murder ended that psychologically comforting delusion for good.  When a young man with a young family is killed in the prime of his life, people sit up and take notice.  When an American is assassinated for his political convictions, otherwise non-political Americans wake up from their apathetic slumber.  When random leftists celebrate murder across social media platforms and mock a young widow’s suffering, even Americans who desperately wish to get along with everyone realize that the country is in peril.  

Two months after the leftist-inspired political assassination of Charlie Kirk, it is clear that the country is not healing in any form.  Leftists continue to call for political violence.  Democrat politicians continue to call non-leftists “fascists” and “Nazis.”  Democrat-aligned “journalists” continue to blame Charlie for his own murder.  There is a growing awareness in this country that the whole house of cards precariously holding civil society together could come crashing down with one more violent riot or political assassination.  

What happens then is anyone’s guess.  But formerly non-political Americans know that the country’s domestic peace is in serious jeopardy.  Too many Americans seek and cheer violence right now.  Too many Americans are eager for civil war.  If we cannot lower the temperature in this country, Charlie’s murder will presage an unbearable slaughter to come.

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