When Is It Good News That Someone Is Dead?

After the political assassination of Charlie Kirk, I noticed something about how I was reading the news: A barely-conscious fear was circulating through my body, a fear that the shooter would be someone in my “tribe,” even if only a fringe member of it. I needed to exonerate myself, to draw a sharp, indelible line between what I believe, and the person who could murder another human being. I was reading to find an unbridgeable divide between me and the murderer: “Please Lord, let the shooter be nothing like me” (cf. Lk 18:11).

What quieted my racing pulse was not anything in the news. First, I had to admit that my immediate emotional response was less than admirable: Instead of grief or compassion, I went straight to making Charlie Kirk’s assassination all about me. A man died, another had become a murderer, and my first thought was to be sure I was in the clear. That was embarrassing to admit, even to myself.

So I took a deep breath, and forgave myself for being human. The need to belong and to know that you are a good person is deeply woven into all human beings. There’s no use blaming ourselves for that initial fear that the foundation of our goodness might be at risk.

I didn’t want to react out of that fear because I knew the search for differences would cloud my thoughts. So I took a breath and tried to calm down. I focused on what connected me to Kirk, and to his assassin: our humanity. Like me, each man’s feelings, beliefs, and actions were informed by their need to feel like they were on the side of goodness and truth. That need makes us cling to differences instead of leaning into our shared humanity. We all succumb to this calculation: If the other guys are wicked, and I’m nothing like them, then it’s reasonable to assume I’m the good guy. 

Too bad the logic doesn’t hold up.

I am NOT saying that all ideas are equal. Of course they aren’t. Human beings have never really agreed on the right way to run a society, and some theories are definitely more inclusive and hospitable than others. Yet one idea all sides will wrestle with is the role of violence in keeping the peace. I am indebted to the writers of Wicked for performing so clearly, on stage and screen, a belief that still dominates our culture: that violence is a legitimate way to solve problems.  

At the end of Wicked, Part 1, Elphaba has realized that the Wonderful Wizard is behind the persecution of the Animals (a unique species of intelligent, talking Animals who are being silenced and disappeared). Her sorcery teacher Madame Morrible tries to calm her down by saying, “We’re doing this to keep people safe. All of Oz will benefit.” Then the Wizard lays the myth of good violence out in the open: “When I first got here there was discord and discontent. And back where I come from, everybody knows that the best way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy.”

He’s not wrong. Scapegoating works. It’s exhilarating to know who the enemy is and to be on the side of “truth and justice.” But that is exactly how violence self-perpetuates. Scapegoating only works to bring together those who agree on who the enemy is. When we can’t find a common enemy, we become each other’s scapegoats. We all become potential perpetrators and possible victims, unified against each other.

We still don’t know much about the shooter or his motives. It’s likely that, as more information comes to light, people on all sides of our political divide are going to feel uncomfortable as we learn what sort of rhetoric shaped and radicalized this young man. We’ll be more and more tempted to establish distance or cry out about just desserts. I caution anyone against pinning the problem of violence on the shooter or his tribe, whatever that might have been. And if your tribe is implicated, do what you’d want the other guys to do: take responsibility for how your own rhetoric may be contributing to a culture that legitimizes political violence. 

It’s a mistake to think that we can solve the problem of violence by rooting out violent people and putting them behind bars. And it’s way too convenient to exonerate ourselves by pinning the shooter’s violence on others’ rhetoric. These solutions are still rooted in the search for differences, to bolster our sense of ourselves as the good guys. 

To leave behind the search for differences, we would do well to remember Dr. Hooker’s insight: “People are not the problem. The Problem is the problem.” 

“People are the problem” is the idea that drives scapegoating violence. Violence can seem necessary and just IF we succumb to the false idea that one person or group of people are the problem. If we continue down the path of ultra-partisanship and fail to see fellow human beings across the divide, good people will continue to endorse or perpetrate violence without ever doubting their own goodness. More and more people will die in the name of that goodness. Violence will continue to escalate with no end in sight.

Whether you are on the left or right, whether you were at Utah Valley University that day to support Kirk or to protest, the problem is not people. The problem is the idea that violence solves problems. When we gather around diagnosing the real Problem, we can imagine different solutions beyond persecution, scapegoating, and political assassinations. Gathering in this way invites us to imagine a new way of thinking that delegitimizes violence as a tool for achieving peace. Vera Grabe, a former guerilla fighter in Colombia who turned in her weapons to embrace nonviolence, taught me that: “There is no path to peace. Peace is the path.”

In these times, it’s more crucial than ever to remember to always mourn the wicked. It’s what good people do.