Charlie Kirk was the good cop – the alternative is grim

The other day, I was playing a game of hide-and-seek with my toddler, where I was hiding behind the couch. When he came looking for me, as a joke, my wife told him “I think Daddy’s gone! He’s disappeared!”

But rather than finding this game fun, my son immediately got very upset and emotional, and started asking “Where’s Daddy? Where’s Daddy?”, saying he loved me and asking me to “come back”. Realising he was in distress, I immediately emerged from my hiding spot, at which point he was overjoyed to see me, squealing with delight, running over as fast as his little legs would carry him, and giving me hugs and kisses.

For the foreseeable future, Charlie Kirk’s young children, aged 3 and 1, will be wondering that same question: “Where’s Daddy?” Except in their case, Daddy isn’t going to emerge from behind the couch. He’s not going to walk through the door at the end of the day. They’re not going to go upstairs, and walk into his home office six months from now, and find that silly Dada was just hiding up there the whole time.

Daddy is never coming home. When those children are 65-years-old with grandchildren of their own, they’ll still be dealing with the emotional fallout of their Daddy not coming home.

All because a sick, twisted lunatic couldn’t stand to hear an argument they disagreed with.

In a way, Kirk’s murder feels more significant than the shooting of Trump – and not just because one man died and the other lived. Even if Kirk had pulled through and survived, this whole incident would still feel qualitatively different.

While a President getting shot is extremely serious and grotesque, it’s happened before, and, to a certain extent, it’s kind of an expected risk that comes with the job. Powerful people throughout history like Presidents, Prime Ministers, Emperors and Kings get assassinated – it’s horrible, but it happens when you’re dealing with political power struggles for the future of the world’s strongest nation. The President has access to nuclear codes, and State secrets, and other things that you can imagine people being willing to kill over.

Trump is an abrasive billionaire who is a direct threat to the Left’s power. He’s made enemies of China, Iran, Islamic terrorists like ISIS, Latin American drug cartels who cut people’s heads off, Leftwing Antifa terrorists…the list goes on. There’s any number of people who’d want him dead. That someone would try to blow his head off at a political rally is awful, but not shocking.

The same applies to other populist outsider political figures that have been targeted in recent years. Rightwing leader Jair Bolsonaro, while on the campaign trail to become President of Brazil, was stabbed in 2018 in an attempted assassination.

Last year Populist Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot 3 times and barely survived. The shooter said he was motivated to carry out the shooting by Fico’s opposition to sending military assistance to Ukraine.

Also last year, Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a former vice-president of the European parliament and co-founder of Spain’s Rightwing Vox party, was shot in the head in Madrid. Again, he barely survived.

A Leftist lunatic tried to assassinate far-right commentator Nick Fuentes last year after the would-be assassin had already killed 3 other people. The assailant was shot dead by police before he could carry out the assassination.

But once again, these are all figures who sick people deemed to be radicals or political threats, rightly or wrongly. None of it is remotely justified, but one can begin to comprehend how a warped psyche might resolve to do something drastic like that.

Kirk, by contrast, was obviously not a direct threat to anybody. He was literally just a man who wanted to have conversations with students.

He wasn’t a politician with hard power, nor was he an extremist. If anything, during his life, if many people had a critique of him, it was that his views were so tame it was almost a bit too meek for some people’s liking – he wasn’t saying anything new or particularly outside-the-box. Charlie Kirk did not hold any belief that was not already also held by tens of millions of other Americans.

And for daring to speak bland, bogstandard conservative talking points in public, he was gunned down like an animal. All he wanted to do was calmly talk out political disagreements on college campuses, and he was left slumped back in his chair with blood gushing from his throat in front of his horrified wife and children, who likely didn’t even understand what they were witnessing.

Clearly nothing about this situation is remotely funny, but it’s almost like a dark joke that he was shot dead under a banner that said “PROVE ME WRONG”. He put forward an argument, asked “What’s your rebuttal?”, and the only retort his opponents could muster was a bullet. There’s a kind of depraved poetry in that.

To those Leftist inhuman ghouls who are celebrating this, the question must be asked: where do you actually think this leads? Where do you think this all ends up?

Every political movement has its moderates and its radical fringe. People like Charlie Kirk are most certainly the moderates.

The Charlie Kirks of this world want to have debates, organise student societies on campus, and run for elections so they can pass laws and propose amendments. They’re the kind of people who’ll post memes and slag off the Left, but will still have Leftwing acquaintances and will make it clear they’re only teasing in good fun. They’ll get a pint with you after the debate, and you can co-exist with them – they’re good neighbours who’ll come to your summer BBQ and put political differences aside for the sake of friendship.

But what happens when you kill the good cop publicly for the world to see? What happens when you convince a generation of young rightwingers that even if they do things the peaceful, democratic, right way, there’s still a very real chance that they could die choking on their own blood?

Do you think that nice, happy-go-lucky “olive branch” instinct will persist for much longer? Or will you be facing a much uglier, nastier, meaner calibre of opponents going forward?

If people like Kirk get murdered for trying to do things the right way, how long until people start doing things the wrong way?

I pray to God I’m wrong, but it feels like politics is going something very dark, and like we’re facing into a future that nobody is going to like, including those who are celebrating and laughing about this now.