Charlie Kirk. What can I say?

I am writing about Charlie Kirk, because I want everyone to know where I stand on what happened in Utah.

I didn't know Charlie Kirk, I didn't know anything about him, and I only saw him once or twice while I was channel surfing and stopped at some of the right-wing TV channels to see what they were up to. It was usually the same hyperbole and bombast about the political landscape how the left was mucking everything up. The script never changed and I only stopped on the channels for a few minutes, sometimes seconds. Honestly, I seldom watched television news or opinion programs because they are all the same.

That would be how I saw a glimpses of Charlie Kirk. I never heard him speak, never followed his media activities, and basically, I knew nothing about him. Let me say this before I say anything else.

What happened to Charlie Kirk should not happen to anyone. I don't care who they are or what they represent. But when the media took over on the news content and Charlie Kirk became a cause célèbre, I decided to find out more about him.

What I read was no surprise. I understood why I did not know anything about him. Because if I had seen or heard him speaking, at the very start I would turn it off, because almost anything he said I disagreed with. It doesn't matter why I disagreed, I just did. I have that right. The same as he had his right say what he was saying.

Charlie Kirk was not just someone who had an opinion and a right to voice it, he was an activist and wanted his opinion to be the only one. That makes him an ideologue. Some would say a bigot. It depends on what and where you are finding your definitions. He made this his career and he earned a living on his opinions.

In today’s political climate, to think that you will not offend and anger some people who are already a little off center seems to me to be a little naive. Charlie was a smart guy. He knew that people who were already connected to a political party and were typically adults and voting, had already made their minds up on being so called conservative or liberal. Changing their minds would be a futile and expensive effort.

His strategy was to go to the college campuses where young minds were open to ideas and change. After all that is what colleges do. It was also one of his talking points of contention. That the liberal left was stealing the minds of our youth with socialist ideas. It did not bother him that even though there may be no truth to that, he still wanted his opportunity at the minds of the youth and he held events at colleges for that purpose.

He needed visibility and presentation to promote his philosophy. But there were and are dangers to that especially when you challenge everyone who has another opinion. That was one of his tactics at these open events. Did people get angry and provoked? Yes, they did.

I'm sure he knew the risks and tried to mitigate them the best he could. But when you present a public persona, especially one that someone may see as opinionated and inflexible, you are at risk.

I will not go into the things Charlie Kirk represented. You can find that for yourself. Am I surprised at what happened? No. Why? because Charlie Kirk actually thought the answer to gun violence was more guns. I didn't believe it either, but he actually said those things.

When will all of this stop? In my opinion, not for a long time.

Not when the current President cannot leave it the be. He still wants to lay blame on a political group or party. It will not end until we actually have people living on Mars and those of us who are sick of this can move there.

Jack Wilson

Opinion