empathy

It wasn’t the greeting I was expecting from my dad when I stopped by for lunch Wednesday at his Anaheim home.

“¿Quién es Charlie Kirk?”

Papi still has a flip phone, so he hasn’t sunk into an endless stream of YouTube and podcasts like some of his friends. His sources of news are Univisión and the top-of-the-hour bulletins on Mexican oldies stations — far away from Kirk’s conservative supernova.

“Some political activist,” I replied. “Why?”

“The news said he got shot.”

Papi kept watering his roses while I went on my laptop to learn more. My stomach churned and my heart sank as graphic videos of Kirk taking a bullet in the neck while speaking to students at Utah Valley University peppered my social media feeds. What made me even sicker was that everyone online already thought they knew who did it, even though law enforcement hadn’t identified a suspect.

Conservatives blamed liberalism for demonizing one of their heroes and vowed vengeance. Some progressives argued that Kirk had it coming because of his long history of incendiary statements against issues including affirmative action, trans people and Islam. Both sides predicted an escalation in political violence in the wake of Kirk’s killing — fueled by the other side against innocents, of course.

It was the internet at its worst, so I closed my laptop and checked on my dad. He had moved on to cleaning the pool.

“So who was he?” Papi asked again. By then, Donald Trump had announced Kirk’s death. Text messages streamed in from my colleagues. I gave my dad a brief sketch of Kirk’s life, and he frowned when I said the commentator had supported Trump’s mass deportation dreams.

Hate wasn’t on Papi’s mind, however.

“It’s sad that he got killed,” Papi said. “May God bless him and his family.”

“Are politics going to get worse now?” he added.

It’s a question that friends and family have been asking me ever since Kirk’s assassination. I’m the political animal in their circles, the one who bores everyone at parties as I yap about Trump and Gov. Gavin Newsom while they want to talk Dodgers and Raiders. They’re too focused on raising families and trying to prosper in these hard times to post a hot take on social media about political personalities they barely know.

They’ve long been over this nation’s partisan divide, because they work and play just fine with people they don’t agree with. They’re tired of being told to loathe someone over ideological differences or blindly worship a person or a cause because it’s supposedly in their best interests. They might not have heard of Kirk before his assassination, but they now worry about what’s next — because a killing this prominent is usually a precursor of worse times ahead.

I wasn’t naive enough to think that the killing of someone as divisive as Kirk would bring Americans together to denounce political terrorism and forge a kinder nation. I knew that each side would embarrass itself with terrible takes and that Trump wouldn’t even pretend to be a unifier.

But the collective dumpster fire we got was worse than I had imagined.

President Donald Trump shakes hands with moderator Charlie Kirk, during a Generation Next White House forum at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex in Washington, Thursday, March 22, 2018.

(Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press)

Although conservatives brag that no riots have sparked, as happened after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, they’re largely staying silent as the loudest of Kirk’s supporters vow to crush the left once and for all. The Trump administration is already promising a crackdown against the left in Kirk’s name, and no GOP leaders are complaining. People are losing their jobs because of social media posts critical of Kirk, and his fans are cheering the cancel cavalcade.

Meanwhile, progressives are flummoxed by the right, yet again. They can’t understand why vigils nationwide for someone they long cast as a white nationalist, a fascist and worse are drawing thousands. They’re dismissing those who attend as deluded cultists, hardening hearts on each side even more. They’re posting Kirk’s past statements on social media as proof that they’re correct about him — but that’s like holding up a sheet of paper to dam the Mississippi.

I hadn’t paid close attention to Kirk, mostly because he didn’t have a direct connection to Southern California politics. I knew he had helped turn young voters toward Trump, and I loathed his noxious comments that occasionally caught my attention. I appreciated that he was willing to argue his views with critics, even if his style was more Cartman from “South Park” (which satirized Kirk’s college tours just weeks ago) than Ronald Reagan versus Walter Mondale.

I understand why his fans are grieving and why opponents are sickened at his canonization by Trump, who seems to think that only conservatives are the victims of political violence and that liberals can only be perpetrators. I also know that a similar thing would happen if, heaven forbid, a progressive hero suffered Kirk’s tragic end — way too many people on the right would be dancing a jig and cracking inappropriate jokes, while the left would be whitewashing the sins of the deceased.

We’re witnessing a partisan passion play, with the biggest losers our democracy and the silent majority of Americans like my father who just want to live life. Weep or critique — it’s your right to do either. But don’t drag the whole country into your culture war. Those who have navigated between the Scylla and Charybdis of right and left for too long want to sail to calmer waters. Turning Kirk’s murder into a modern-day Ft. Sumter when we aren’t even certain of his suspected killer’s motives is a guarantee for chaos.

I never answered my dad’s question about what’s next for us politically. In the days since, I keep rereading what Kirk said about empathy. He derided the concept on a 2022 episode of his eponymous show as “a made-up, new age term that … does a lot of damage.”

Kirk was wrong about many things, but especially that. Empathy means we try to understand each other’s experiences — not agree, not embrace, but understand. Empathy connects us to others in the hope of creating something bigger and better.

It’s what allows me to feel for Kirk’s loved ones and not wish his fate on anyone, no matter how much I dislike them or their views. It’s the only thing that ties me to Kirk — he loved this country as much as I do, even if our views about what makes it great were radically different.

Preaching empathy might be a fool’s errand. But at a time when we’re entrenched deeper in our silos than ever, it’s the only way forward. We need to understand why wishing ill on the other side is wrong and why such talk poisons civic life and dooms everyone.

Kirk was no saint, but if his assassination makes us take a collective deep breath and figure out how to fix this fractured nation together, he will have truly died a martyr’s death.

Conservative political activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed on Wednesday. His suspected killer, identified by law enforcement as 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, was taken into custody after a substantial manhunt, based on information from people close to Robinson’s family. Utah Governor Spencer Cox said a family member of Robinson had reached out to a friend, who then contacted the authorities, and that friends and relatives interviewed by investigators described Robinson as “full of hate” when speaking about Kirk at a recent gathering. Robinson’s exact motivations for allegedly carrying out the shooting are still being explored.

If past instances of political attacks are any guide, more detailed information about Robinson’s potential motivations may be revealed over time. But we don’t need to read a manifesto or scroll through social media posts to know that any attempt to justify killing Kirk over his words or views is indefensible.

I mostly avoided Kirk’s rhetoric over the years. I found most of the content I heard from him distasteful, both to me and to many other Americans, and offensive to objective facts and discourse. Kirk often cherry-picked and distorted history to push agendas that many of us believe are not only abhorrent but also dangerous to racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, and other marginalised people.

But I did not want Kirk to be harmed. When I learned that he had been shot, I did not want him to die. On the contrary, I prayed that God’s will be done in the situation – the same God whom Kirk and I both claimed, whatever our political disagreements may have been. I hoped that he would recover, and that his brush with death might help him gain a new, more constructive perspective on politics and life.

Last summer, I had similar hopes (though perhaps not expectations) that Donald Trump would be changed for the better after he survived an assassination attempt while speaking at a campaign event. “Trump has the opportunity to put the peace and security of the country ahead of his personal ambition,” I wrote at the time. “Perhaps coming so close to death will change his perspective on stirring up his supporters.”

That did not happen. Instead, Trump quickly returned to the same sort of demonising rhetoric and selective outrage that has heightened and polarised American politics. He pardoned the January 6 rioters who attacked Capitol police officers, as well as the Proud Boys members who had been convicted of conspiring against the United States government. And even with Kirk dying from a shooting similar to the one that almost took Trump’s life last year, the president and many of his supporters have mainly doubled down on the type of vitriol that has become all too common in American politics.

This is not to say that the MAGA movement or the right has been alone in condoning political violence or dehumanising others. When UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed late last year, his alleged killer, Luigi Mangione, became somewhat of a folk hero. While this killing does not appear to be explicitly partisan, many of the comments that mocked Thompson or celebrated Mangione took on the tone of class warfare. And when unsubstantiated rumours about Trump’s health started to circulate recently, many of his detractors seemed to celebrate the possibility that Trump could be incapacitated or worse, and expressed disappointment when he re-emerged in the public eye.

But toxic online rhetoric is one thing, and nearly any popular topic will elicit offensive or hateful commentary on social media. With the MAGA movement led by Trump, the hateful language of its most trollish followers is often indistinguishable from the rhetoric coming from the movement’s loudest and most prominent voices. After breaking the news of Kirk’s death on social media, President Trump posted a four-minute video honouring Kirk and demonising the political left.

“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now. It’s long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonising those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.”

Now seems like an appropriate time to remind you that, less than a year ago, Trump appeared on Fox News and referred to leftists as “the enemy from within” and “Marxists and communists and fascists,” specifically naming Adam Schiff and “the Pelosis” and calling them “so sick and so evil.”

“From the attack on my life in Butler, Pennsylvania, last year, which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on ICE agents, to the vicious murder of a healthcare executive in the streets of New York, to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others, radical Left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.”

Noticeably absent from the president’s list were several violent, sometimes lethal, attacks against Democrats or carried out by self-declared MAGA followers. It is a calculated choice to condemn the shooting of a prominent Republican in 2017 but not the murders of two Democrats and the shooting of two others in Minnesota three months ago, or the torching of the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion while Democrat Josh Shapiro and his family slept inside. Condemning “attacks on ICE agents” after pardoning dozens of people who attacked Capitol police officers is a cynical double standard.

Through the discourse surrounding Kirk’s death, I’ve become familiar with the term “selective empathy,” a succinct phrase that covers a concept with which many of us are familiar. At their worst, President Trump and even Kirk engaged in this type of moral relativism, condoning actions against their opponents that they would condemn if done to their allies. And those of us who reject the MAGA ideology are at our worst when we tolerate, excuse, or even celebrate, violence against those who oppose us or who hold us in disdain.

At his best, Charlie Kirk manifested his core religious and political beliefs by appealing to the universal values of love and human dignity rooted in Christianity and the principle of equality on which the United States was founded. While he often failed to conform his rhetoric to these larger principles, Kirk and others in his ideological camp are still deserving of the empathy embedded in those principles. To deny them such consideration based on their views would be to undermine our own opposition to their divisive and even dangerous rhetoric. For all our sakes, we can and must do better.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

July 29 (UPI) — In a time when many Americans disapprove of current U.S. immigration efforts, officials at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Tuesday pointed out that CBP does more than protect Americans from illegal activity at the nation’s borders.

Since 2010, the New York office of U.S. Customs and Border Protection has partnered with the nonprofit Global Medical Relief Fund to provide assistance in a series of humanitarian acts and medical relief to children in over 64 nations.

“U.S. Customs and Border Protection is responsible for protecting the country,” Frank Russo, field director of the CBP’s New York office, noted in a statement.

But border agency officials spoke of a “commitment” to “balancing enforcement with empathy.”

On Tuesday, the federal government revealed that last year in June three young adult victims of violent attacks in Tanzania linked to tribal and ritualistic beliefs “were able to receive urgent medical care and prosthetics in the United States” due to CBP and GMRF working hand-in-hand.

The three young African natives born albino were, according to officials, “targeted and mutilated due to superstitions that their body parts bring good luck.”

They were lifted to the United States and stayed on Staten Island at GMRF’s Dare to Dream House in New York for children getting medical treatment.

The Staten Island-based GMF sees support from a network of international embassies and medical entities such as Shriners Children’s in Philadelphia.

Officials noted that whole the three albino survivors had since aged out of pediatric care, private medical company Med East had stepped-up to provide new prosthetics for the Tanzanian natives at no cost.

Russo reportedly visited the group. On Tuesday he called the CBP job “incredibly challenging.”

GMRF claims 500 children in 59 countries have been helped by their work with at 1 million “lives changed.”

However, the “commitment” by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to balance empathy and enforcement arrived as other federal law enforcement agencies, particularly U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, has seen a barrage of criticism.

ICE has faced waves of public backlash and negative media attention, including recent attempts on the lives of ICE agents in the Trump administration’s bid to curtail illegal immigration due to what many say has been unprofessional behavior and other questionable acts.

But Russo says efforts like CBP’s work with Global Medical Relief Fund are “immensely rewarding and demonstrate the humanitarian side of what we do.”

Meanwhile, the two entities on August 17 are set to welcome others via Dubai in the Middle East on a flight that will bring medical care and critical supplies in the area of prosthetic body parts.