Assassination - Open Letter to Readers

Don’t cheer the coffin just because you loathe who’s in it

I Won’t Cheer a Killing

Full stop. A man was shot on a stage in broad daylight, and a family is going to bed tonight without him. That’s a wound to them, and it’s a wound to civic life. Political murder isn’t a shortcut to justice; it’s an attack on all of us. I won’t cross that line, not in anger, not in relief, not ever.

There’s a bitter symmetry I can’t ignore. Charlie Kirk built a brand by turning human beings into foils and pain into applause. He died by public violence in a country that keeps handing grievance a trigger and a clear line of sight. I can name that without gloating. It’s not vindication. It’s a warning.

Light Against Empire

My frame for this moment is simple: light against empire. Not a party against a person. People against a machine that profits from fear, sells us each other as content, and treats blood as engagement. The machine doesn’t care who bleeds. The light does.

What I Mean by “Empire”

By “empire” I don’t mean a far-off capital with marble steps. I mean the web of incentives that turns our worst impulses into somebody’s quarterly win: donor funnels that reward cruelty because it “energizes the base,” platforms that juice outrage because it keeps us doom-scrolling, pundit economies that need a fresh villain every morning, and an easy river of firearms that can turn a bad hour into an irreversible headline. A clip goes viral because it’s dehumanizing; donors reward the dehumanizer; algorithms learn the lesson; the next speaker pushes harder; someone steps out of a parking garage with a rifle and a grievance, and the whole cycle pretends to be surprised.

What I Mean by “Light”

For me, the light is three daily disciplines:

Radical human dignity

Every person—ally, adversary, agitator—has the same baseline claim to life and safety. I’ll criticize conduct, fight policy, and call lies lies, but I won’t argue that any class of people is less than human. Dehumanization anywhere invites violence everywhere.

Strategic nonviolence

This isn’t meekness. It’s refusing to hand authoritarian movements the spectacle and martyrdom they feed on. When you answer cruelty with cruelty, you widen the audience for the strongman’s solution. Nonviolence cools the temperature, lowers lethality, and keeps the moral high ground from becoming an empty phrase.

Attention sovereignty

Don’t rent your focus to people who monetize harm. Spend it on protection, truth-telling, and repair. Screenshots, statutes, budgets, incident reports—receipts over reels. Attention is a budget; spend it where people come home alive.

Lower the Temperature, Lower the Lethality

If we want out of the loop—grievance, gun, funeral, repeat—we need steps that don’t make great TV and do make a difference.

• Safe storage: Normalize locks and cables through schools, pediatric visits, leagues, and city contracts. A locked gun forces time into a bad minute; time saves lives.

• Extreme-risk protection orders: Train cops, judges, and clinicians to use ERPOs fast and fairly; publish metrics to keep the tool honest.

• Waiting periods: Not a cure-all, a speed bump—which is often enough.

• Domestic-violence prohibitions: Make orders show up in the right systems and enforce them like we mean it.

• Event security that protects speech: Controlled entries, clear sight lines, trained de-escalators, published plans. Protest zones that aren’t cages, counter-protest norms that are real.

• Crisis teams and warm lines: Pair clinicians, medics, and trained peers so more calls become rides, appointments, and plans—not arrests.

The Rhetoric We Choose

I don’t care which jersey someone wears—if your argument depends on turning whole communities into subhuman threats, you’re building a road you may not want others to travel. Fight hard without crossing the line that makes us what we oppose. Quote opponents fairly. Retire apocalypse talk that conditions people to expect war. Refuse victory laps over harm. If your point requires a corpse to land, it’s not a point I want.

Receipts Over Reels: Two Small Stories

The notebook at the town hall. A grandmother stood up with a spiral notebook, not a slogan. She asked about safe storage in school packets, whether our city had ever used the ERPO law, and why the DV unit had three vacancies. The room pivoted from posturing to policy. Five minutes of receipts beat a week of hot takes.

The campus that didn’t blow. Rumor screamed “riot.” It wasn’t. A nonviolence team with vests and clipboards knew the layout, had rapport with student leaders on both sides, and a direct line to facilities. They moved a mic, set a Q&A cadence, and walked the tension down. No arrests. No injuries. No headlines. That’s light. It just isn’t cinematic.

What Leaders Can Do Right Now

If you hold office or influence: condemn political violence without hedging; model language that criticizes conduct without erasing personhood; fund the quiet things that work—ERPO training, DV enforcement, crisis teams, de-escalation, safe-storage campaigns—and publish the numbers. Run agencies with radical transparency: deployment orders, after-action reports, bodycam policies. Receipts build trust; trust prevents panics.

What Institutions Can Do

Campuses, unions, faith communities, civic groups: protect speech and protect people. Set nonviolence codes you’ll actually enforce. Invest in de-escalation like you’d invest in fire extinguishers. Harden venues where risk is real. Announce what you can so rumor doesn’t do the rest. Have a known liaison who picks up the phone when flashpoints hit.

What Citizens Can Do

Pick one unglamorous role and keep it—poll worker, court watcher, hotline volunteer, canvasser. When someone tosses the old scapegoat line—“It’s mental health,” “It’s them,” “It’s inevitable”—answer with calm facts and a simple moral insistence: people aren’t your talking points. Then pivot to a task: “Want to help staff the safe-storage table at the school fair?” Motion beats despair.

Resist the Spectacle

There will be more attempts to turn grief into fuel. Don’t post the clip. Don’t share the blood. Don’t become unpaid distribution for the worst day of someone’s life. The machine can’t sell what we don’t buy.

The Courage that Scales

Courage isn’t fireworks; it’s maintenance. It’s a quiet vote that saves lives. A student insists that the protest stay peaceful. A neighbor walking someone back from a ledge with tea and a phone call. A parent locking a gun and having a hard week with a teenager who lives to grow up. Boring courage is the kind that scales.

My Pledge

I won’t cheer a coffin. I won’t launder cruelty as “truth-telling.” I’ll push for the unglamorous safeguards that lower the odds of more funerals. I’ll spend my attention where it saves, not where it sells. I’ll argue like a democrat—small “d”—which means I’ll fight hard, quote fairly, and leave your humanity intact even when I loathe your position. If love is the command, fear won’t be my method.

Keep the Light Lit

A man was killed on a stage. We can let that become another episode in the outrage series, or we can treat it like the alarm it is. The empire wants another season. The light wants a different ending. I know which one I’m working toward. I intend to keep it lit.

Further Reading: