I learned that Charlie Kirk was dead by seeing a video of his assassination on social media. It is an unfortunate sign of our times, when “If it bleeds it leads” has been replaced with “Monetize misery.” I hate it. I also hated the feelings of the next few days, of watching so many professional thinkers, writers and public figures serve, whether intentionally or unwittingly, the president’s agenda.
A text from a smart, well-informed friend snapped me out of my emotional paralysis. “Who,” she asked incredulously, “was this guy?” She had never heard of Kirk, his organization or the political infrastructure that had produced him, but his grand public funeral rites and the lionization that accompanied them were inescapable. With few exceptions, people looking for an answer to that question found that broadcast, legacy, print, digital, cable, streaming and independent outlets were speaking with a remarkably singular voice.
Her confusion was a sign of the times. Whether you want to call it authoritarianism or not, the president is criminalizing dissent, from regular people and comedians to political rivals. The culture of retribution breeds a natural but regrettable human impulse to self-censor in our public squares. Some of us fight that impulse by anxiously learning vocabularies to track Trump 2.0’s destruction — tariffs, shadow dockets, self-deportation, unitary executive theory. But we must acknowledge that it is becoming harder to be informed, and that is by design.
For years, I’ve taught students how to vet the quality of information, how to check sources against their biases and how to triangulate competing facts. It is part of being a responsible citizen, I tell them. If you want to consume a balanced media diet, you might read international news through your local library’s online platform. Or you might tune into public radio or television. Maybe you would contextualize today’s news with the long perspective at a museum, a university lecture or a deeply researched book.