The 6th commandment states “You shall not murder.” This is certainly something humans have not lived up to.
After all, if you are a believer, only God has the power to decide who lives or dies. Right? Unfortunately, though many believe God created us (though, not yours truly), he hasn’t endowed us with the tools to overcome our primal tendencies. We live in this paradox: we know what we should do, what is right- but underneath our rational self, primitive forces exist that we can’t control. If you’re honest with yourself, at some point in your life, you’ve had a fantasy or two that was violent, perhaps even murderous? That’s just part of being human. Most of us can keep it in the world of fantasy but some can’t.
So why would God put us in this situation? Why would he allow there to be so much violence in the world? Some would say God is challenging us; that through your connection to him, your capacity for love will triumph and the evil forces that live within you will be tamed. It’s certainly a plausible idea, one Jesus would have definitely promoted; but it hasn’t exactly turned out that way.
If God=Love, then why have more people been killed in the name of God than anything else? The awful and absurd part of it all is that much of it has occurred because of primitive thinking: My God is the real God. Your God is evil. There can only be one God and it’s mine. If you don’t believe that I represent the truth then you are my enemy. You must see it like me or else you are a threat. Frankly, these beliefs are no different than two little kids claiming that their doll or truck is the best. Hopefully their passions about their toy doesn’t create violence. Not so in the case of religion.
Humans by nature are tribal. Belonging to a group, where people have a shared vision, set of beliefs and common purpose creates comfort and a sense of identity. It’s not that religion, as an idea, doesn’t make sense. It makes perfect sense; but so did the belief that the sun revolved around the earth before Copernicus discovered that it was the opposite.
Humans have always searched for ways to explain their world. Making meaning of things is one of the things that separates us from animals. We have imbued powerful attributes to rocks, animals, built monuments to deities we invented, and created systems that could help explain an unknowable world: the search for meaning and security are inextricably tied. These systems were defended vociferously. If one tribe believed something was essential to their existence and another didn’t, the “other” became a threat. At times, the threat was so existential, that there were basically two options: conversion or annihilation.
The fear or disdain of the “other” has been a central component in our development as a species and has led to horrendous events. Enslavement, unfathomable murder in the name of religion, the killing of 6 million Jews because they were seen as less than human. Sadly, to dehumanize others (which by the way is the exact opposite of Jesus’ mission) in the service of solidifying a belief system, allows us to rationalize the brutalization and murder of others.
Here in the year 2025, we have learned little about how to manage these tribal experiences which continue to lead to death and destruction. Look at Israel and Gaza, Ukraine and Russia, Sudan. Killing, starvation, and destruction of the other.
Look at our own country, how we divide by dehumanizing others. Haitians are eating dogs. Masked men grabbing people off the streets because they are of Hispanic origin. Creating conspiracy theories, like the “Great Replacement Theory” that posits that Jews are responsible for bringing in immigrants to diminish the influence of the White population. Daily assaults on the LGBTQ community, Muslims, and the erasure and devaluation of Black history.
This brings me to the murder of Charlie Kirk. Murder is wrong, but tribalism creates violence. Charlie Kirk and The Don have been instrumental in ginning up tribalism to a fevered pitch. They have created their own White Male Christian Supremacist cult. They didn’t create White Christian Supremacy, that has been part of the American story since its beginnings; but they have stoked the flames to such an extent that we find ourselves in a scary, dark place.
I am a firm believer that one should be celebrated for how they lived, not how they died. Charlie Kirk may have been a hero to some, but he was an anathema to many. He was racist, homophobic, demeaning of women, and an avowed White Christian Supremacist. Kirk’s vision for America, wasn’t one of peace and pluralism- but of white nationalism and the denigration of Americans deemed unworthy of and unfit for equal citizenship.
Is that someone we should hold up as a martyr? Well, we did put a White Supremacist in power, so it’s not surprising.
Here are just a few things Kirk proselytized that stoked resentment and divisiveness:
“The philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country.”
Joe Biden is running a “Gestapo administration.”
MLK was “awful. He was a “bad man.”
On the Civil Rights Act of 1965: “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.”
“Prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people — that’s a fact.”
These beliefs should not be extolled, but refuted. They represent the White Christian Supremacy of the Confederacy, not America. Kirk, The Don and all their followers view diversity as a curse and they exalt Whiteness. We took down Confederate statues because we did not think it appropriate to honor these men. I wouldn’t be surprised if statues and monuments to Kirk rise up all over the country. What’s the message we send when we honor Kirk with flags flying at half mast on Federal buildings?
His murder has created fury and desire for revenge on the right. This idea that the Democrats, as Elon Musk stated, are the “party of murder,” is not only false, but it’s incendiary. In fact, when Nancy Pelosi’s husband was brutally beaten, Kirk used his platform to call for a “patriot” to bail out the man who broke Pelosi’s house in San Francisco and attacked her husband with a hammer. That’s the kind of guy I don’t want as a poster boy for our country.
According to Luke Barnett, a pastor, Kirk’s murder has “unleashed a dragon. “It is time for you to rise up because of what has happened to Charlie Kirk today.” “I can just envision, right now, 10,000 Charlie Kirks rising up in campuses right across America, proclaiming the truth of Jesus Christ.”
“I think he’s a true American martyr,” said Carson Carpenter, a recent Arizona State University graduate who met Mr. Kirk while serving as president of the school’s College Republicans.
“There’s no option for Christians to just sit on the sidelines anymore,” Ms. DeJarnatt, a 24 year old follower of Kirk said. “The sideline’s gone. The world needs Jesus, and it’s up to us to tell them about him.”
In a country founded on the separation of church and state, Kirk advocated vociferously for a Christian nation. He was on his own personal crusade to convince young people that the only way was the Christian way.
And what did our fearless leader have to say about Kirk’s murder? How did The Don respond. Did he try to appeal to people to lower the volume? I think you could have guessed the answer to this. After all, it is his capacity to stoke divisiveness, seek revenge, and spew hate that is at the root of this hyper polarization.
When asked on Fox News, “How do we come back together?” The president rejected the premise. Radicals on the right were justified by anger over crime, he said. “The radicals on the left are the problem,” he added. “And they’re vicious. And they’re horrible.” The facts are that a 2022 study by the Anti-Defamation League (which is not a left-wing group) as well as more recent studies found that, over the previous decade, more than three-quarters of political murders in the United States resulted from right-wing motives.*
Here’s congressman Bob Onder responding to Kirk’s murder: “Some on the American left are undoubtedly well-meaning people, but their ideology is pure evil. They hate the good, the truth, and the beautiful,’and embrace the evil, the false, and the ugly.”
So we’ve come full circle. Republicans are good people, beautiful, and represent the truth. Democrats are the false, evil, and the ugly. Does this sound any different than “my God is better than your God”? And we know what happens when tribalism rules. In this country, the people in power want to return us to a time when White Male Christians ruled and all others were devalued, where Church and state are no longer separate. It is a power-play that is destroying our democracy. Charlie Kirk was a vital part of this mission. Lionizing him as some kind of hero just strengthens the movement away from a democracy to a theocracy. History doesn’t paint a pretty picture ofwhat happens to those who don’t believe.
This is a scary time. Right on cue The Don and his henchman are using Kirk’s murder to consolidate their power. Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, vowed to shut sown “hate speech” in a chilling assault on the first amendment. (Somehow, I don’t think she will be shutting down all the hate speech produced on the right!) They are promulgating dangerous lies are lies about the left and insinuating that they represent an existential threat to our country. They are threatening to bring the weight of the federal government down on what they alleged is a left-wing network that funds and incites violence, seizing on the killing to make broad and unsubstantiated claims about their political opponents. They are stoking a hyper-tribalism that could lead to a spiral of violence. Instead of Kirk’s tragic murder being a wake up call to the devastating effects of our polarization, The Don is using it to to further justify his unconstitutional and dangerous actions against a large swath of the American people. The Don doesn’t give a shit about Charlie Kirk. He just sees it as a way for him too consolidate his power and destroy his enemy and democracy with it.
*Acts of violence perpetrated by the Right-wing.
- The man who targeted and killed Democratic state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark in their home in Minnesota in June was a Trump supporter.
- The man charged with the attempted assassination of Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, in April was a Trump supporter.
- The man convicted of orchestrating a series of shootings at the homes of four Democratic elected officials in New Mexico in 2022 was a Trump supporter.
- The man who tried to kidnap then Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and assaulted her husband, Paul, in 2022 was a Trump supporter.
- The men who wanted to hang Mike Pence on Jan 6, 2021, were Trump supporters.
- The man who killed the son of Obama-appointed District Judge Esther Salas in 2020 was a Trump supporter.
- The men who were convicted of trying to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, in 2020 were Trump supporters.
- The man who sent pipe bombs to the homes of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and other top Democrats in 2018 was a Trump supporter.
The man who killed left-wing activist Heather Heyer after driving his car into a crowd of counter-protesters in Charlottesville in 2017 was a Trump supporter.
The Grand Offal Party 