By Irishexaminer.com,Richard Hogan

Copyright irishexaminer

That’s the world we’re in, you have to question the validity of everything, such has been the assault on truth. It’s a strange time when you have to second-guess what is blatantly in front of your eyes. It was a horrifying sight. The blood pouring out of his neck, the way his body stiffened — it was just awful.

That’s another part of this story: how social media sends graphic images to our children’s phones. The video disturbed me, and I’m a grown man. Imagine what it was doing to all those millions of children who had it foisted on them by the algorithms. Nobody is mentioning that aspect of this story. It’s disgusting.

I became aware of Charlie Kirk many years earlier when he started to pop up all over social media. His shtick, to me, seemed a bit childish: say outrageous things to college students, sit back and watch them become apoplectic trying to defend their beliefs, then post it on social media for huge clicks. His slogan, “prove me wrong”, also seemed a little performative and childish.

I was surprised by how famous he had become. Mr Kirk recently went to Oxford, where he discovered there’s a significant difference between debating American sophomores and highly educated students in England. But it was all just entertainment.

The vitriol Kirk garnered did make me remark to my wife one evening: “He is putting himself in a precarious situation, sitting down surrounded by thousands of students who absolutely hate everything he stands for, in a country where guns are everywhere.” The students, in their own way, were unaware of their hypocrisy; they were only intolerant of his intolerance. That is a dangerous ignorance to be surrounded by.

And so we have another senseless victim of gun violence in America. The reaction to Mr Kirk’s death has been another remarkable feature of this news story. While his murder was deplorable, the reaction by many was equally as disgusting. Videos of people celebrating his death flooded social media. People who consider themselves highly empathetic and caring individuals were sharing videos of how happy they were that he was murdered.

In moments like these, we look to our elected representatives to calm rising tensions. Not so. Nancy Mace, a Republican congresswoman from South Carolina, told a cadre of reporters that, “Democrats own what happened today”.

There was no evidence at this point who had committed this crime; she only had partisan vitriol as her evidence. Donald Trump, of course, rather than trying to bring Americans together and assuage violent rhetoric, further stoked the fires by also placing the blame on liberal democrats.

“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” he said. “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism we are seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”

I don’t have enough space in this column to unpack the hypocrisy of those words.

The whataboutery could take up the entire paper. His speech also looked like AI. There was something odd about it. Fox News didn’t miss their opportunity to heighten tensions across America; Jesse Watters called for retribution: “We’re gonna avenge Charlie’s death.” It’s a dangerous game they are playing.

The whole thing is ugly. And yet, as the world was stunned by this random, senseless act of violence, in another part of the world, a forced famine rages, and the international community stands back and scratches its head. If only Trump cared as much for innocent Palestinians as he did for a kid who could get him young votes. The Palestinians are poor and offer him nothing. Netanyahu thinks Trump should get the Nobel Peace Prize, so on he goes with his illegal campaign of annexation and genocide.

It’s hard to remain positive about humanity in times like these. But the Trumps and the Netanyahus of this world, while powerful right now, will not topple our humanity. They are footnotes in history.

They are an aberration, a fracture in nature, something we will analyse for years after they are gone and ask, “how did we allow them such power?”. Our children’s children will study this particular period of time and ask: “How? How did the world stand back and let all those children die?” They will ask: “Did you not know what was going on?” They will be met with silence. We all know what is going on. It is happening right in front of our eyes.

On the same day as Charlie Kirk’s death, there was another school shooting in America. There were 100 incidents of school shootings in America in the last year alone: 31 deaths and 96 injuries. We hear little about those deaths. A constitutional amendment means exactly that — it can be amended.

But you’d need politicians who care more about children and saving lives than lining their pockets with money to achieve that. Another senseless death has come and gone, another wife left bereft and on her own to raise her two beautiful children.

Those children will never know their father. Like all the senseless deaths in Gaza, each life is as precious as the next. It’s all so pointless. But I refuse to live without hope.