When the importance of a man’s death is weighed by his perspective on life, he is no longer a man. He is no longer a breathing, speaking, advocating, human being for whatever cause he championed.
He is a symbol.
And the clever manipulation of symbols is that, of course, symbols are not people, but tools. They have no ability to change, no adaptability or agency granted onto themselves. Their purpose, whether it be in the wielding of verbal war, or justification for action, or whether simply in the contentment of belief in someone’s heart, is not of them.
All a symbol is is how it is used.
The context of a perfect literary placement, a clever pop culture reference, a singular anachronism placed carefully in the middle of your article.
These are the places of symbols. And because we insist that choice is ours to take and to hold, we are structured upon such liberation of mediation.
America is built on symbols.
We toss tea into the sea. We cast our own fabricated stars into the sky as though they belong up there with the heavens. We paint our geographical canvases with the red of the bloodshed in the names of victories we’ve captured in our raised fists.
In this, there is justice we say. In this, there is truth.
Of course, truth was only ours to choose. And though we live as neighbors to with whom we disagree, this truth is shared, if not applicable to all. At least that’s what we tell ourselves. We are currently living in different realities. We all do our part of the human experience.
We live and we die without ever totally knowing what it’s like to be anyone but ourselves. And yet we insist that there is truth, and if there is truth, we know there is truth because it is true to us. It is true to us.
Now. Humanity is intriguing because we are of the only species with which we would turn on our pack without sustaining ourselves. We could be both separate and wrong.
If I hate who you hate, why wouldn’t you love me?
In this way, we are united in our division. Divided we stand, we are split into houses of cards, divided by shape or color or rank. The only thing we can say for sure that we know about the person who disagrees with us, is that they would rather prefer not to be near us. And we, not them. Is this because we despise them? Or because we believe they despise us?
Either way, it would be a waste of time to consolidate.
When you consider a murder a political issue, you are noticing a trend.
When you consider the morality of murder as a political issue, you are forgetting life.
“I think media could be doing more to unite people, especially in this instance,” Leah Dudley (12) said.
What you are doing is taking all one has ever known of this existence – and using this absence to justify all that is becoming of the moment. When you determine the morality of a murder based on the beliefs of the man killed, you are dehumanizing they who are murdered, and they who are very much still human.
When you consider the actions of a murderer to be the representation of a political side, you are applying rational reason where rationality was void. A murderer has already stripped themselves of the ability to understand the importance of human life. The extreme of an individual does not signify the belief of a whole.
The assassination does not represent the Democratic Party. It does not represent the will of the transgender community. It is not a singular testament of the failure of conservatives. It was a murder.
Debating which political “side” you are on in a killing is pathetic. If human life has become a zero sum game, in which death is a pawn and violence a tragic strategy, then we have nothing to be proud of.
Our weapons are not isolated to our guns.
No, talking heads ravage decency for viewership. The news seeks to keep us updated on all the vices to placate our egos.
What has our world become when empathy is considered naive? Where to choose a side is to survive and brace for impact, and to mediate is to throw yourself upon two swords?
Echo chambers become shields. Screams become victory cheers. Civil disagreement becomes a casualty on the battlefield.
To make a man’s death about those you hate is to livestream on his grave, using the tomb as a pedestal upon which you stand to speak.
It is not necessary to mourn the ideology of a man. You don’t not have to agree with him, nor support him simply because absence paints a rose gold hue on his memory.
But we must mourn for the death. Because no matter where you stand, this is a tragedy for the country. For the availability of hate and division plentiful enough to drive political violence. For breeding a growing dissonance. For our immediate spinning to feed the ever-hungry ouroboros of polarization.
“The murder of Charlie Kirk was an even bigger catalyst for the ongoing war between right-wingers and left-wingers, as the tension and intense disagreement between both parties was just fueled by that even more,” Kayla Kroehnke (12) said. “People comment and fight. They always have and always will. Media always impacts things like this, in every which way.”
Politicians accuse and sensationalize. If we have not formed an opinion, we are uninformed. If we don’t agree with a side, we are considered naive. If we agree, we are saints. Disagree, and we are devils.
As we read or watch, the implications of each image shout from our subconscious. We can be triggered by so much as a name.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk is breaking news on all platforms. It is global, it is local, and it is ubiquitous.
Now, it is a symbol.
We have allowed ourselves to be desensitized to murder. And we are over-sensitized to a ballot.
Who is to blame for this? An individual? A party? A “side”?
Or, maybe, it belongs to the game.
If our words have had this effect, imagine what is possible if we redirect them towards understanding.
We have the power to be brought together. To find a sense of rationality, a sense of belonging. We have the opportunity for discourse that need not bring a raised volume to your voice; conversations that need not condescension.
We have the responsibility and power of symbols.
