Still Sad About Charlie

Still Sad About Charlie

It’s been a few days, and you can feel the news cycle trying to change, but it’s not changing yet. My wife hasn’t got any decent sleep since the day Charlie was killed.

She says it’s because she watched the video of Charlie’s murder, the one that the wiser amongst us said that everyone should watch, though I never do what the wiser of us say. I know better—and it’s not for sleep. You just don’t watch a fucking video of a decent man dying. It taints you. It doesn’t take a genius to know this.

I’m finding now that I don’t know anymore where to go on the internet. I feel a little bit lost. The things that always annoy me about this personality or that personality, annoy me even more.

After the election—and with the rise of a kind of popular fractiousness among nominal Trump supporters—I get sick very quickly of the quibbling, when only a year ago we were facing four years of Kamala Harris. It’s like standing in a long line for ice cream on a hot summer day, and the twit in front of you wants to sample all the flavors in the store before she gets her scoop of vanilla.

Before all this, I often found myself going to the Charlie Kirk show in the course of a day, and I was thrilled at how much influence Turning Point was having with young people during the 2024 election. I was a member, and I guess I was a fan, but I never could have predicted how sad, how really sad I am. Browsing around X, it seems as if I’m not alone.

Having lost some of my appetite for the internet, I will read or write to pass the hours, but then I find myself coming back to myself and realizing for the hundredth time that Charlie Kirk is dead.

And my response to that fact is: I wish he weren’t dead. That’s it. Can any response be more pathetic? I wish he weren’t dead. I do.

So now I’m wondering: why do I feel this way? This isn’t like me, I’d say offhand. There’s more here than what meets the eye. About myself. But also about Charlie Kirk, the father, son, and husband—and also the Christian and the podcaster. I’m not going to give you an analysis. Fuck analysis. It probably has something to do with hope.