The thing that gets me about Charlie Kirk’s murder, more than the bare brutality of it, more than the horror of political violence, is the number of people I know who had their lives shaped by Kirk directly or through the work that he did. Among the Instagram story tribute posts from big organizations and the highlight reels of speaking events were selfies, signed hats, picture booths, and group photos. All over the country, people who I’ve met at conferences, school, and at work knew the man not just as a commentator and occasional source of headlines but as someone they’d shaken hands with, spoken to, and learned from. A broader circle never met him but had him to blame for their career choice, college friends, passion for the future of our country, networks created which wouldn’t exist otherwise, and internships hosted by offices that might have been filled differently if not for the work of his organization. He was a unique figure, among my circle, no one else was both human and symbol in the same way. The President is a symbol. The local CR chair is a man. Charlie Kirk was a man who my friends had met but then saw on TV; he was a man they could have plausibly expected to meet again.1 Until Wednesday.
Maybe that’s why his death is so heavy.
Footnotes
-
He was a man that every Liberty student was going to hear from in a few weeks. I probably would have seen him again after that, potentially many times. Now? Never on this side of life. ↩