For those of us of a certain age, the assassination of Charlie Kirk brought back memories of other momentous assassinations — the moment of disbelief and then stomach-turning horror on first hearing the news, the sense that events were tilting wildly out of kilter, the fear that more terrible things were in the offing.
I was a college sophomore visiting another school on that sunny Friday afternoon in November 1963 when I heard, and for a few seconds did not believe, that President John Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas. I had been intending to attend a Saturday football game, which, of course, was canceled, and somehow made it back home, dazed, on a bus.
In the days that followed, Kennedy’s family and admirers, and much of the media, attributed his assassination to an atmosphere of right-wing hate in Dallas. It was solemnly asserted that America was fundamentally a violent nation.
WHAT THE MURDER OF CHARLIE KIRK MEANS
But in the messier and not universally accepted reality, the assassin was a Communist who had lived and married in Russia and had been in touch with Soviet agents. In retrospect, I think political leaders were reluctant to blame the president’s assassination on the Soviets, for fear the American people would clamor for war against a nuclear foe.
In the years that followed, I came to think that Americans had been especially shocked and shaken, because this assassination was not consonant with the popular narrative of American history. In the nation’s two bloodiest wars, the country was led by two commanders-in-chief who died suddenly just about at the moment of victory.
President Abraham Lincoln was struck down by a Confederate supporter just days after the surrender at Appomattox. President Franklin Roosevelt died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage just weeks before the surrender of Germany and four months before the atomic bombs produced the surrender of Japan.
The Americans of their days had watched, and those coming after could see how these two presidents, very controversial figures during most of their terms, visibly aged under the burdens of sending hundreds of thousands of their countrymen to their deaths.
After their deaths, they were seen as martyrs who aged before their people’s eyes and seemed to give their lives to the cause of making the nation stronger and better.
The death of John Kennedy was not like this at all. He was famously vigorous and had not seemed to age significantly in office (though secretly he was in dreadful health). He had not been commander in chief in a war comparable to those of 1861-65 and 1941-45 (though he had performed well in the Cuban missile crisis), and he had not fallen at the moment of victory (though the civil rights act he came tardily to support was, in my view, on the way to enactment and success). To the Americans of the day, his assassination seemed senseless, out of kilter, incomprehensible.
Disorder followed. Less than five years later, a white racist murdered Martin Luther King Jr., and a Palestinian terrorist murdered Robert Kennedy. These were years of unsuccess in Vietnam and violent riots in major cities, of unanticipated inflation and of largely unpunished terrorist bombings and homicides, years in which four consecutive presidents were driven from office.
America no longer seemed providentially blessed.
All these thoughts came into my head with the news of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, 80 years after the death of President Roosevelt, and twice 80 years after the assassination of President Lincoln. Kirk was not as prominent a figure as these leaders, and at 31 was not as prominent yet as Martin Luther King or Robert Kennedy were when they were taken from us. Had his life not been cut off, what he would have accomplished cannot be known, just as we could not know what President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, or Robert Kennedy would have done had they lived.
The assassination of Kirk, as many have noted, is just one of many instances of violence against political figures, including the two attempts, one nearly successful, to assassinate President Donald Trump. Most have been directed against Republicans, but some also at Democrats. Some of the attackers have been lunatics, possessed by delusions, but some were politically motivated, by feelings uncomfortably close to those of partisan politicians.
That certainly seems true, as this is written, of the man accused of murdering Kirk. He succeeded in silencing a man who had dedicated himself to speaking openly and civilly to young people, especially those with whom he disagreed, on campuses so many of which, for a generation, have been speech-suppression zones. Kirk’s increasing sincerity in open and respectful debate has received eloquent tribute from the liberal Ezra Klein in the New York Times, conservative Erick Erickson in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and by Utah Gov. Spencer Cox in remarks after the suspect’s capture.
People my age used to ask each other where they were when they heard that President Kennedy was assassinated. Today, young people tell me that their parents were not yet alive on that awful day 62 years ago. People my age rightly lament that American history is not properly taught, and I gather that few Americans anymore contemplate the awful symmetry of their successful commanders-in-chief falling at the moment of victory.
Perhaps that can be an advantage, perhaps it is easier to navigate the rapids of political controversy without the expectation of providential blessing. Perhaps it is well to remember that the wartime Presidents Lincoln and Roosevelt were hugely controversial in their terms, hated by millions of their fellow citizens, by no means assured of the electoral majorities the record books show they won.
UTAH GOV. SPENCER COX’S REMARKS ON CHARLIE KIRK
Many of their policies and procedures were indeed departures from the norms of the time, as many of the policies and procedures of the current president are. People will disagree about such things. The optimist in me wants to think that most Americans will emerge from this tragedy and be more inclined to respectfully tolerate disagreement, as Gov. Cox urged.
Is that too much to hope for?