I Despised Charlie Kirk. But His Assassination Is No Victory.

A Warning About Where We’re Headed

Charlie Kirk was a man I had no respect for. He built a career out of turning prejudice into politics with racism, sexism, and transphobia, all wrapped in the flag and sold as “patriotism.” He wasn’t just wrong; he was cruel, and he used his platform to make life harder for people who already carry the weight of being othered. That part of his legacy doesn’t deserve polishing just because he’s gone.

But none of that makes his assassination a victory. He wasn’t silenced by debate; he wasn’t defeated in the arena of ideas. He was shot. That’s not justice. That’s a collapse of politics itself. When we normalize the idea that the way to deal with people we despise is through violence, we step off the path of democracy and into something far uglier.

And here’s the hard truth: if assassination is acceptable for someone like Kirk, then it becomes acceptable for anyone. The same logic that justifies pulling a trigger against a man I hated could one day be turned against people I admire, or against me, or against you. Once political violence takes root, it doesn’t stay contained; it spreads.

So I won’t mourn Charlie Kirk as a man. But I will mourn what his death represents: a country drifting into a place where bullets speak louder than words. If we want to win against the poison Kirk stood for, we have to be better than him. We have to defeat bad ideas with better ones, not by killing the people who hold them.