Political Violence
I am at home sick, and my group chat with all my 13 best friends starts going off. “Charlie Kirk is so dead.” Not knowing how to decipher that very Gen Z text. It could have meant so many things. One of my friends responds, “Is he coming to Oklahoma?” and if he were, I know she would have been first to debate him. Then the next response from the source, “No, he got shot.” Still, I did not know what to think. It was crazy, really, and almost like a light bulb moment for me.
As one does, I immediately race to social media to see what everyone else is saying. The next responses are what caused me to go on another tangent. People all over the internet, in TikTok comments, news stories, Instagram reels, and Facebook posts. People are feeling very politically polarized by this incident. And I hate to admit it, but I even texted back in the group chat saying, “I am conflicted and do not know how to feel about this.” Because I firmly believe that no one deserves to get shot in the neck like that. But then, at the same time, I am reading all these contradicting comments. Things along the lines of it was karma, what does he expect when he believes that “liberty comes at a price,” referring to the fact that gun ownership will lead to some deaths. So, he is basically saying that people will die at the cost of our laws, and he proudly stands on that. Someone like that should not be surprised that he got shot in the neck, right? Wrong. No one deserves to get hurt at the cost of our laws. But this is not a piece on debating whether or not I think gun safety is an issue, because that's a whole other conversation.
I want to bring our attention to the political violence happening in our country. Political violence that has polarized our country, pitting us against one another, unable to trust our leaders – the type of violence that is a threat to our Democracy.
This most recent event brought me back to news headlines reporting the assassinations of Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark. It also made me think of the attempted murders of Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. The two assassination attempts against our current president, and from the textbooks, the assassination of one of my favorite presidents, Abraham Lincoln. All these acts are examples of threats to the US democracy.
It is even more apparent now. Because we are in the midst of some intense political tension right now, we are seeing a rise in intimidation and violence. This is dangerous. Not only is this a dangerous situation to be in, but it also tells us a lot about our country. We are broken. Might I say that we are at an all-time low? We can no longer let politics come between us; instead, we must work together. Regardless of party, we need to come together to be better heard and understood. Political discourse should never resort to or result in violence. We as Americans are better than this; we as human beings are better than this.
So again, being real, I am not condoning violence, but as I try to understand the conflicted feelings over the recent news, there comes a point where people start to feel so disenchanted that they can justify violence. We cannot blame them, because these feelings have to come from somewhere, but at the same time, we cannot normalize this.
This should be a wake-up call. A wake-up call to come together to revive the culture of American democracy. A culture where we all feel heard and seen and do not have to resort to acts of violence to get someone’s attention. Maybe then, things will be different. I live for the times when things were different and more for the times when they will be again. Republican or Democrat, religious or non-religious, let us all agree that political violence has no place in our country.
Sending prayers and best wishes to the victims of political violence and, as a whole, the victims of gun violence.
