I shouldn’t have to write that. We shouldn’t have to read it. But here we are.
Civilization has long maintained a thin veneer of actual civility, and even that has largely worn away during certain periods in history. We’re in danger of that again here and now.
Saturday night, a gunman tried to breach the White House Correspondents’ Dinner with a shotgun, a handgun, and knives. By Sunday morning, social media was flooded with claims the whole thing was staged; that every assassination attempt against Donald Trump has been theater.
Yet last September, a rooftop gunman assassinated Charlie Kirk in front of his audience at Utah Valley University. Within hours, untold thousands of Americans posted some version of the same line: Charlie got what he deserved. That’s the same spirit that made the assassination attempt Saturday night, and it wasn’t staged. Charlie is dead.
Everyone who is justifying and dismissing that needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror and search for their humanity–the Abel part, not the Cain part.
Political violence isn’t new, not even in American life. What’s new is the speed at which we’re learning to justify, and even celebrate it. Each shooter acted alone. The mob typing “good” and “deserved” and “STAGED… wake up” isn’t alone, and it’s growing. Its adherents find comfort in every new post that isn’t universally condemned. Each such post lowers the barrier for the next would-be assassin. Each conspiracy dehumanizes the victim and promotes justification. Each “he had it coming” makes the next bullet a little easier to fire.
A lot of excuses are made for the attempts against President Trump, but are we really surprised? After ten years of hyperbole claiming that Trump is the greatest threat to the world, calling him a Fascist, Hitler, and everything else under the sun, are we really surprised that people are taking it upon themselves to murder him?
But here’s what should keep us all awake: it’s not limited to President Trump. Charlie Kirk wasn’t in a position of power. He didn’t have access to the nuclear football. He didn’t engage in President Trump’s brand of personalized, inflammatory rhetoric. He debated. He argued. He invited everyone and took questions on hostile campuses. He exercised his First Amendment right in the healthiest, most productive way. He was assassinated anyway.
Thought Crime isn’t supposed to be a thing in America, but it is, and any one of the 350 million of us could be the judge, jury, and executioner.
Please hear my plea: this mindset won’t stay on one side of the aisle. It will provoke counter-justification from the right, and we’ll spiral into something we can’t recover from. It doesn’t matter what our party affiliation, political ideology, or how we vote. We cannot allow this mindset to prevail in America.
In my 2021 article, Communification, I wrote that we had devolved into raw tribalism, where everyone on the “other side” is evil simply because they are on the “other side.” Five years later, the tribe is now licensing murder. As I’ve noted so often, George Washington warned us in his Farewell Address that the tribalism inherent in political parties “kindles the animosity of one part against another” and “foments occasionally riot and insurrection.” He was right in 1796, and he’s right today.
This year, in the 250th birthday of our nation, my wish is that we can all reorient on America’s founding principles before our two political parties even existed. The greatness that is America can’t continue to shine as a beacon of liberty throughout the world when such unreasoned and blinding hatred is allowed to overshadow all our abundant goodness.
Thou Shalt Not Murder is one of the Ten Commandments for a reason. It’s not metaphor. It’s not negotiable. It doesn’t contain an exception clause for political opposition. If you cheered when Charlie Kirk was assassinated, or shrugged when shots rang out at the Hilton, please, search your soul.
I keep coming back to something I’ve said for years: ninety percent of our problems would evaporate if we treated one another as fellow children of God first, and everything else second.
Please, fellow Americans, neighbors, live that axiom. There is no other path back from where we’re heading.
-Shelby Williams
