Kirk’s assassination was a horror unique among high profile murders. There was an element of nihilism to it, as if none of this really matters if the worst of them can get to the best of us in the way they did with Charlie. It’s hard to believe the headlines, and it was difficult to watch what appeared to be an exploitation of his death, and it’s been far more difficult to see this horrific event left in the cloud of dust kicked up by the endless news cycle. His memorial was strange: less a solemn remembrance than an opportunistic mega rally. Maybe he’d want that, maybe not. The jubilance felt like a harbinger, a knell warning of…something. Kirk himself seemed to be lost among the pageantry. And now it feels he’s lost to us entirely, as if he simply ceased to exist, rather than ripped from this world in a horrific geyser of blood.
For one brief shining moment, it felt like Charlie’s death opened a gateway to…something more meaningful than what we’ve got. Time appeared to stop, and many of us seemed to momentarily awaken from our news-cycle stupor to demand more fundamental action. But that will has evaporated, Kirk’s death has spun through the cycle, and we’ve reverted back to the mindless consumption of 24-hour news. Do we not want more? What is the goal, what is this all for, if not for the midwifing of a new world, a gift for our children and grandchildren? Catalyzing events, even horrific ones, are the axis upon which history pivots. Did we flunk one possible destiny?
