OPINION: Political violence must end here

The assassination of Charlie Kirk is a bottomless tragedy for the American people and the prospects for healing this sundered nation. The killing of Kirk, an intelligent, articulate leader of a right-wing movement, evokes the martyrdoms of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Kirk’s death, coming amidst a mounting wave of political violence, will represent — for tens of millions of young people — another martyrdom in the war against the left; against liberal culture; against Democrats.

President Trump and Steve Bannon lost no time in weaponizing Kirk’s slaying as evidence of a left-wing conspiracy to silence their best and brightest rising star. Lost in the hate rhetoric swamping the internet is the fact that a 31-year-old man, slain by a sniper’s rifle, left two young children fatherless; two children who were neither Democrat, Republican or MAGA. Kirk was another victim of gun violence. His death was almost immediately followed by a shooting at Evergreen High School in Colorado — which was merely one student with a handgun critically wounding two others before taking his own life.

In the space of 15 months, two bullets fired by two cold-blooded killers — one grazing the head of candidate Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the other taking Kirk’s life — have changed the course of American and world history. The latter high velocity round from a sniper’s rifle may have — almost immediately — altered the outcome of the midterms by shifting public sentiment, especially that of young voters, against the Democratic Party.

Bullets can be the death of democracy because they replace civil discourse with silence; they eliminate leaders without voting; they generate a fear of chaos which becomes the rocket fuel of demagogues preaching law and order; and they can inspire reprisals and counter reprisals; they can set the tinderbox alight.

If there is any glimmer of hope in yesterday’s tragedy, it is this: The revulsion of the vast majority of Americans when confronted with the bloody slaughter of a leader as the cameras rolled. But as America venerates its martyrs, there is something perverse at the heart of a country that needs martyrdom to motivate political change.

And the killing of Charlie Kirk is as unlikely to inspire a peace movement on the far right as it is to inspire one on the far left. And this assassination places the right ever more firmly in control of the narrative.

Whoever the killer is and whatever his motive, the script has already been written — that is, unless the silent majority of our fellow citizens say: “Enough — it must end here.”