Charlie Kirk is dead or is he?

This is a reflection on what I learned about Charlie Kirk after his tragic death on September 11, 2025. I freely acknowledge that it is influence by the fact that his web page and Youtube channel Clearly recognize the inequity that is endemic to this country but provide little insight regarding resolution of that inequity.

 

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Story: Charlie Kirk is dead, or is he?
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Story: Charlie Kirk is dead, or is he?

I was traveling from Bratislava, Slovakia headed to the Vienna airport when I heard that Charlie Kirk had been killed. Kirk’s death, like the dozens of gun deaths that happen every day was a tragedy. That’s something we can all agree on. Knowing that my access to reliable news sources would be limited over the coming hours, I set aside my curiosity for the coming days.

Kirk spent a great deal of his time illuminating the simplicity on this side of complexity. My own aspirational world view coincides with Kirk’s in a number of ways.
Among Kirk’s ideas that resonated with me:
Individual liberty, free markets, and personal responsibility
The impact of cultural and personal choices: family structure, educational attainment, work ethic, etc.

Kirk appears to have had the privilege in life to live his aspirations. His primary talent seemed to be to persuasively build a mythology based on the idea of universal equity. Kirk regularly pointed to cultural and personal choice as an explanation for the (well documented) inequity that is a part of life in the United States.

Whether by intention or implication, Kirk often suggested that inequity is a result of people not looking like him, loving like him, or believing like him. The implicit message is that the only reason people don’t have everything they want is because inferior people are taking advantage of a rigged system. The implication is inferior people are outsmarting superior people by manipulating social and economic systems.

I can only speculate on why people found the rhetoric of Charlie Kirk so compelling. Two thoughts come to mind:
The myth of meritocracy provides cover for ignoring the inequities we see around us -.
Rationalizing inequity as a result of cultural norms and poor decision making is an invitation for people who look like Kirk to rationalize that others, who don’t look like them, must be gaming the system to enjoy the rewards they find so very elusive

In some ways, my own views parallel Charlie Kirk’s. The major difference is my views recognize the complexity on the other side of simplicity:
Things are the way they are because they got that way
our systems are not broken, they work exactly as intended
“Violence is what happens when we don’t know where to go with our suffering.”

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Dan Lococo, PhD
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