Charlie Kirk

Where Have I been?

Charlie Kirk

When I read that Charlie Kirk had been assassinated, my initial reaction, on seeing the story led every news site in my inbox, was, Who was Charlie Kirk?

I read further and discovered that this 31 year-old man was perhaps the most influential figure among young conservatives, and the organization he founded, at 18, played a major role in the 2024 election.

I went to his obituary in the NYT and learned that he was married and had two small children.

From what I read, he would have made my blood boil with his contempt for what we have come to call diversity. The gender and economic and racial identities that are the fabric of this country.

He was speaking in front of 3000 people. From some 100 yards, someone fired a sniper’s bullet that pierced his neck. The news said there were countless cell phones videoing when it happened, and the videos showed blood erupting as his head snapped back.

The videos went viral on social media.

10 years ago, or maybe just 5, I didn’t really know quite what was meant by social media. And I never would have used the word “viral” in that context. Now, though I don’t participate in social media, at least explicitly, (is SubStack social media?), I speak of things going viral on social media, without blinking.

I can’t measure how the evolution of culture has marked me. I think of myself as old, stuck in another era.

I wonder how Charlie Kirk (do I have his name right?) has impacted me?

From the little I can absorb from reading about his murder, I am the sort of person who would be a setup for his attacks.

I keep hearkening back to that bullet piercing his neck, his precious life force, blood, suddenly erupting, his blood pressure plummeting to zero in an instant, his heart briefly fluttering impotently.

Was there a micro-instant in which he knew? Did he see light?

And his wife and small children. Were they there to see this? Will they look on social media to see the moment that changed everything in their lives?

What are we to do with all this?

Until Lacey told me about the flags surrounding the common yesterday, I had forgotten that it was 9/11.

Every year on November 22, I relive the assassination of President Kennedy. All the dirt that has been dug up about him hasn’t diminished the feeling I had when I saw the – was it a live tv coverage, or still photos? – of Jackie, her blood-stained suit, standing next to the casket that had been hastily brought from the hospital to the plane.

And of John John – was he 3? – holding a flag as he cautiously touched his father’s flag-covered casket lying in state.

I was 23, still being formed.

9/11 was a profound shock, but I was fully formed by then. It somehow took it’s place alongside a whole host of events that have shaken the world to its core, but too late to find a place in my bones. The bones weren’t impermeable, they broke more than once after that, but even the place where they healed, is scar tissue, not original.

I can no longer remember how resilient I may have been when Kennedy was killed. I’m embarrassed that, even as the twin towers went down, and the stories of people jumping to their death, my bones understood that I would, for better and for worse, Go on.

It seems unjust that Charlie Kirk should die at 31, while at 85 I’m still swimming, playing pickle ball, eating lobster.

Was he as bitter as his rhetoric makes him seem? Or was he a clever manipulator who figured out the place on the media spectrum that would provide him a platform for aggrandizing himself?

Should I be chagrined that I hadn’t heard of this nationally significant young man? Or grateful that my intractable and pig-headed refusal to own a tv or enlist in social media, has spared me?