Like it or not, at this moment, we are who we are…
I heard again today. And, again, it sounded so utterly self-serving, so tiresome. In the aftermath of the murder of Charlie Kirk, whose MAGA ‘tough-guy’ shtick always seemed just another self-promotional effort to normalize the crudeness and cruelty inherent in their movement, I listened as the talking heads repeated our own self-indulgent plaint: “This is not who we are!” Sometimes, the refrain is rephrased as, “We are better than this!!” Both responses are delusional. We are, in fact, this — no better and, perhaps, trending toward worse.
There should be no rationalized Schadenfreude , no Freude in any form, when violence is an accepted answer to our problems. Wishing our rivals off the planet is not a solution to our current circumstances. It has become a zero-sum sport. The harm (Schaden) is permanent, while the joy (Freude) is fleeting. Our national plight requires reconciliation, but the temper of our time cries for retribution. The vicious cycle of our times remains unbroken.
It is time we realize that, for whatever reason, we are in a situation of our own making- a circumstance that is uniquely American. Those of us who take comfort in telling ourselves that we didn’t vote for the MAGA takeover, that Trump was never our choice, find no solace in slapping a “Don’t blame me, I voted for the other guy” bumper sticker on your car. Republicans put on the same sticker. Charlie Kirk deserved to have his hateful beliefs discredited with argument and not silenced by the hate and violence he espoused against others. By his own words, he was racist,
“Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.”
- The Charlie Kirk Show, 19 May 2023
“The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.:
- The Charlie Kirk Show, 20 March 2024
an anti-feminist and gender provacateur,
“Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.:
- Discussing news of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement on The Charlie Kirk Show, 26 August 2025
“We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately.”
- The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 April 2024
who preached violence as a solution:
His hatred of the LGBTQ community was well known, specifically his opposition to marriage equality and other rights, which he justified as a tenet of his Christian beliefs. In 2024, Kirk cited the biblical passage from Leviticus that advocates for stoning queer people to death, calling it “God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.”
Kirk intended that his Second Amendment-protected speech incite both his followers and the political left. He succeeded in both respects and was assassinated in its wake. The disintegration of our political discourse is also a victim of hateful speech and violence. The vicious cycle is now in motion, unraveling our national sense of purpose. Charlie Kirk’s death will end none of this and will, in fact, gravely heighten tensions, inviting more hate, more violence. If our enemies had planned a coup, they could not have employed a better strategy for ‘dividing and conquering’ our nation from within.
So, no, we are not really better than this, and at this moment, it is exactly who we are. We are a divided nation — divided by allegiances to our historical past that permitted a separatist ideology to remain unresolved, like a ticking time bomb, planted at the heart of our national politics. If our founders could equivocate on race, what would stop us from doing the same on gender, religion, and the rights of minorities and groups, unspecified in their times?
Charlie Kirk was rather late to the argument that has threatened to divide us since our founding fathers entrusted us with the task of reconciling it. His death only makes clearer who we are at a given moment in our history. Instead of plaintively suggesting that ‘we are better than this,’ it’s time that we demand of ourselves to act that way.
In the end, Charlie Kirk, despite his hateful beliefs, was not an enemy; he was part of us-something we’ve been grappling with from the start. Kirk represented an unresolved and deep-seated ideology that has plagued us throughout our history.
We are precisely who we are.
Originally published at https://www.dailykos.com on September 12, 2025.
