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About twenty minutes ago, I unwillingly saw a video of Turning Point USA Commentator, Charlie Kirk, get shot in the neck. A couple of months ago, I saw a news report of two Democratic Minnesota state legislators and their partners getting assassinated in their homes. About a year ago, I watched as President Donald Trump was nearly killed in an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, PA.. If you asked me two years ago if I could recall an assassination attempt or even a public killing of a high-profile individual, I’d probably say J.F.K. All this to say that the temperature in America is hot right now.
This recent attempt (I say attempt because Kirk has not been declared deceased at the time of me writing this) was abrupt. Kirk has recently been surging in popularity in recent years due to his proximity to the current president and his popular debate clips circulating on the internet. In these clips, Kirk typically speaks about cultural issues fueling the current discontent in America; his opinions align with modern conservative principles, such as pro-deportation, pro-Trump, pro-nationalism, and anti-woke. Just from an anecdotal perspective, most of his videos fall under three categories: talking about Transgender people, arguing that a woman’s duty is in the home, and bringing up crime statistics. I disagree with him fundamentally.
Of course, a popular argument that will arise out of this and is already common is that this is because of Transgender people. In the past weeks, Transgender people have been accused not only by the media but the sitting President of being violent. With Trump even suggesting a gun ban for Transgender individuals. I’m not here to argue on behalf of Transgender people, mostly because anyone rational will be able to see past this bigoted argument. The problem is rhetoric. There’s a common theme between Kirk, the Minnesota legislators, and Trump: These are all political people.
In present-day America, Tensions between the Right and Left, the Left and the Left, and the Right and the Right are at an all-time high. I would go looking for some empirical data, but all you need to do is go on your phone to see that’s true. People are angry. Most of that anger is towards politics and is derived from politics. Ask anyone their opinion on abortion, and you’ll get three answers: silence, “My Body, My Choice”, and “Do you support killing babies?”. Nuance is gone in current American discourse. Anything added other than a black and white point is opening you up to being called either a Fascist or a Communist. Thus, we reach the point where people like Kirk are given a platform. People who articulate their beliefs as facts. Sure, this isn’t just a problem with right-wing people. Other internet creators like Destiny also portray an ultimate disregard for alternative viewpoints. Alienating any opinion on the right as sexist, racist, homophobic, or transphobic (Any of the -ists and -phobics). Kirk is just the other side of the same coin. Both Destiny and Kirk are popular political commentators, to the point where their content has basically replaced how most people born post-9/11 interact with political rhetoric.
What we have been left with in this new state of political media is a feedback loop. Not only do political YouTubers speak in absolutes, but politicians do. Nuance doesn’t sell anymore; saying the other side is the devil seems to fly off the shelves. The irony is that both sides accuse each other of this. Conservatives say liberals want to take away their freedom, and liberals say the same thing. Who’s right and who’s wrong doesn’t matter because everyone is in their own self-contained media ecosystem. A Charlie Kirk fan and a Destiny viewer are basically in parallel universes. Each viewer sees the other as a dangerous fanatic.
Violence in politics is, of course, not new. Abraham Lincoln, Oklahoma City, and January 6th, just to name a few. The difference is in saturation. When JFK was shot, it was the story of the decade. Today, an assassination is just something you see on Twitter. The fact that I saw Kirk shot twenty minutes after it happened isn’t incidental. Violence is now a spectacle. The assassination attempt and the discourse around it are content.
This is why rhetoric matters. Violence is in the words that make the bullet thinkable. When Trump suggests banning guns for transgender people, when Kirk calls women’s liberation unnatural, when Destiny dismisses conservatives as any of the aforementioned ists or -phobics – these takes aren’t just content; They are rhetorical attacks. Politics is performance, and performance rewards extremity. The ones who thrive package disagreement as existential. Which brings us back to Kirk. His shooting isn’t just the result of an individual with a weapon. It’s the product of a culture where politics is war by other means until, inevitably, it reverses back to war conducted by the same means. The obvious question is: where does this go? Are we heading toward an era where assassinations are a regular event, folded into the news cycle? Every assassination attempt becomes a chance for politicians to tighten their grip, for commentators to spin narratives, for audiences to double down? The incentive to cool down is void. If politics is entertainment, then violence is a natural climax. The shooting of Charlie Kirk is shocking, but it also feels like the logical step. We’ve mistaken politics for content and are swiftly running into a reality where bullets are just another form of rhetoric.
