“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely, they will be, by the better angels of our nature”
Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address
George Floyd, Brian Thompson, Melissa Hortman, and Charlie Kirk were murdered. Yet, how America responded writ large to these individual murders is a telling insight into today’s divisions in America, of who has political capital, the power to weld it, and importantly, who lacks it.
Murder is not unusual in America. In 1991, for every 100K Americans there were almost 11 murders. By 2014 that number dropped to about 5 per 100K. In 2024 that number was relatively the same after a pandemic spike in 2020 of 7 per 100k. Most were gun related murders, averaging about 17K to 18K per year. The leading cause of death of kids under 18 in America is gun violence. As a nation we offer them prayers, for a select few, we fight over their deaths.
It is not surprising then, that three of the four persons mentioned above were shot to death. Floyd’s death was unusual, a prolonged public spectacle when a police officer used a knee to compress Floyd’s neck for a prolonged period on a busy street, in broad daylight ,while two other police officers stood by, and witnesses filmed the unfolding murder while pleading to not hurt him.
Today, I am not concerned with their manner of death but with American’s reaction to them.
In 2020, George Floyd’s murder sparked nationwide protests over policing practices and culture in America and the disproportionate killing of black men by police officers; along with other issues of mass incarceration and disparate treatment by the justice system. The Black Lives Matter movement emerged from these protests. Backlash was immediate. Conservative media outlets pointed to Floyd’s criminal record or his alleged drug use to exculpate the police officer’s actions.
Despite the backlash, some reforms did occur at local and state levels, but not at the federal level. Today, physical representations of that protest movement that pushed for nationwide police reform are literally being bulldozed. In March of this year, the Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington DC was torn up and paved over after pressure from President Trump.
In 2024, Brian Thompson, the CEO of the major health insurance company United Healthcare, was gunned down in midtown Manhattan in the early morning hours by a lone gunman. Unlike most murders, it garnered national attention. After a five-day manhunt the alleged shooter was arrested. Again, unlike most murders, the shooter became something of a social media folk hero, a modern-day Clyde of Bonnie and Clyde Fame. He even was given the nickname ‘the adjuster.’ This reflected deep anger by everyday Americans on both side of the aisle against health insurance corporate bureaucracy and greed. Not much empathy for Thompson or his family.
In June 2025, Melissa Hortman, Minnesota’s state legislatures House Speaker, and her husband were gunned downed at their home by a lone gunman. The gunman also shot two others at another home. The nation was stunned and shocked by these politically motivated killings and shootings. However, the right-wing and President Trump unfortunately decided to use the killings to score political points. Attacking Minnesota’s Governor Walz, a political opponent who ran against him on Kamal Harris’s ticket, Trump called him “wacked out Walz” and refused to call him to offer condolences, saying it would be a “waste of time.” Some on the right said the killer was a ‘Marxist.’ Elon Musk blamed the “far left” for the shooting.
For her and her husband, no reforms, no National Day of Mourning, no flag at half-staff, no White House rage at a political killing. The other day, when asked about the double standard of ordering the lowering of the flag for Kirk but not Hortman, Trump, whose better angels are dead or deported, responded that he “wasn’t familiar” with the Minnesota shooting.
On September 10, Charlie Kirk, a right-wing activist and influencer, was shot to death at an event at Utah Vallery University by a lone gunman. Shock once again swept the country. National leaders on the left expressed near universal regret and sadness. The right expressed near universal outrage and anger. Over the past week, that rage and anger grew, it seemed. On the right, vengeance was promised and the White House vowed to investigate far left networks or groups for the Kirk killing, without evidence of a conspiracy.
Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who has already called the Democratic Party a terrorist organization, vowed to “identify, disrupt, eliminate and destroy this network.” The Justice Department said it was going to investigate “hate speech,” although the Attorney General did back track after criticism. Nonetheless, calls to criminally investigate the Soros organization and the Ford Foundation as terrorist funders were made. Even labelling some domestic left leaning groups ‘terrorist organizations” was floated, to include by Trump, who said he wouldn’t mind appending the terrorist label to Antifa. Antifa has no known organization to which to attach it to. It’s more idea than organization.
The Pentagon vowed firings and crack downs on posts deemed critical of Kirk or celebratory or his death. The Department of State also vowed a crackdown on visa holders who criticize Kirk or celebrate his death. I don’t recall similar vows when Representative Hortman and her husband were killed.
Elon Musk in a video played at a far-right protest in England said, “We either fight back or die.” And in a post, demanded the arrest of one rapper for criticizing Kirk and accused universities of “programming people to murder.” Some right-wing social media called for mass arrests and even civil war.
It’s one thing for social media influencers, cranks and crackpots, and fringe elements to threaten and intimidate and engage in conspiracy theory spin. It is completely another thing for senior government officials to threaten vengeance and engage in conspiracy theories while calling for the extirpation of left leaning speech and organizations. Is the criminalization of dissent coming in a forthcoming executive order?
In an example of our government’s authoritarian shift, yesterday ABC cancelled Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night comedy show after threats by the Chair of the Federal Communication Commission to pull licensees after Kimmel made remarks about the Kirk’s killer’s political affiliation. Meanwhile, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade said on-air last week that mentally ill homeless people should be executed. His co-hosts offered no rebuttal. No threats from the FCC to cancel licenses for advocating mass executions. Another example of our authoritarian government’s willingness to control speech of those that do not conform to the governments messaging.
So, here we are. Four murders, four different reactions, four different Americas it seems. I do not want to flatten or simplify the reactions to the murders because there were many individual and collective responses by a broad range of folks, some good, some bad, some ugly. But as a nation, we have struggled to find common ground or cause over politically motivated killings because we now instinctively split into our respective camps, which increasingly aren’t ideological – like a working-class consciousness — but ones based on race and religion. 80 percent of Trump voters were white.
It is clear we are now led by a sectarian national government, a government increasingly narrow-minded and protective of ‘tribal’ affiliations. Kirk was the personification of this sectarianism and white Christian nationalist identity politics for young Americans, young American men in particular. This white Christian nationalism movement dominates our national government.
Kirk didn’t deserve a violent death for his racist commentary, trans bigotry, or anti-Islam sentiment. However odious someone’s speech may be, they are engaging in speech protected by the First Amendment. We must disagree through discourse and words, not violence and bullets. Unfortunately, our government seems to have abandoned this principle and is playing favorites as to who has the right to speak freely without fear of government discipline and punishment.
How then, as a nation, can we find common cause and ground to express our views openly and without fear of retaliation when even our government has abandoned the principle of free speech, plays favorites? Can we ever find that common ground as a nation, bring out our better angels?
It’s not coincidental that I end I began this essay with a quote from President Abraham Lincoln’ first inaugural address. He too died from a cowardly assassin’s bullet. He spoke these words when secessionist war clouds threatened America over an intractable issue: slavery. I think as a nation we are at a similar inflection point over a myriad of seemingly intractable issues.
