Charlie Kirk was an asshole but he did not deserve to die. On the other hand, I am not going to lament his death and I will admit a part of me believes the world is a better place now that he is gone. By the way I thought the same way when Rush Limbaugh finally decided to leave our presence.
What Mr. Kirk, and many like him, did not understand is that his extremism and the rhetoric that grew out of it always leads to increased extremism where political violence becomes much more commonplace.
I have said it before in this space that the political extremism we are currently seeing from the right will produce a similar movement on the left. It is only a matter of time.
Yes it would appear that Mr. Kirk's murderer is not a "lefty" but is instead another right wing nut job, which is something else these right wing extremists seem not to understand. Extremism does not just breed extremism on the other side of the political spectrum it also breeds it on their side. You see, the rhetoric being spouted by the like of Mr. Kirk creates those who begin to believe that the likes of Mr. Kirk are too moderate and therefore have to be removed so that their views can take over as the "mainstream" of their movement. Because you see, extremism does not tolerate "debate". There is no middle ground to be agreed upon so the only solution is to eliminate your opponent, whether they have views diametrically opposed or whether their views are similar to the extremist but they just do not meet a given purity test.
So buckle up, Mr. Kirk was probably only the first one to fall unless the US can somehow step back, which they will not be able to do. Others, on both sides of the spectrum, will suffer the same fate as Mr. Kirk soon enough.
Some might say that I am describing the beginning of a civil war but that is not really the case. Yes, extremists on both sides of the political spectrum will probably target each other and those who they consider not to be true believers but I doubt it will degenerate into general violence.
My "optimism" on the civil war front stems from two factors. The number of extremists at the edges of the spectrum are not that many. Yes, they are loud, motivated and have social media available to give the impression that they have more power and influence than they have but the vast majority of Americans do not believe what they do and when the violence hits a critical mass the wave of revulsion from those non-believers will destroy the extremists' causes. We are not there yet but that time is coming. The second factor is the geographical location of the two extremes. Right-wing extremists are in rural America while the left-wing extremists are going to come from deeply urban America. If the rural folk try to "invade" the urban strongholds of the urban folk they will be crushed and vice versa.
So in the end, we can probably expect more events like the murder of Charlie Kirk, with increasing frequency, but a general war between the two extremes in the US is highly unlikely. As well, we can also expect that the violence between the extremes will not abate for quite some time. We are probably just seeing the beginning. Maybe, just maybe, by the end of this decade, we will begin to see the extremism fade into history.
