It is a sad day for America and her people. The evils that invite suppression and censorship have claimed another victim on their ravaging course toward a single rhetoric without the possibility for dissent.

Today, Charlie Kirk was killed while giving a speech at Utah Valley University. The shooter is not confirmed, but that information is irrelevant when looking at the bigger problem at hand. America is in a state of hysteria that is pushing us to extremes that we cannot recover from. It is not possible to give man back life, and these are actions that will mentally stain the actor forever. 

Throughout his career Kirk has spread right wing talking points on college campuses. He entered spaces that were openly hostile and almost entirely politically opposed to him. He was the man in the area. He sought to promote political discourse and give people a perspective that they had not heard before.

His reward: a bullet to the neck.

America is at a time that we have seen before in history. A shooting at a Catholic Church in Minnesota, a high school shooting in Denver, and now the killing of Charlie Kirk: we are using violence to silence each other, exasperating our differences as opposed to using our freedom of speech to understand our similarities. 

However, we are uniquely positioned in our day and age. Social media allows us to get information in a second. News that happened in Utah can hit the East Coast instantaneously. At its worst, social media can heighten our biases, create villains, and cause mental breaks which lead to a tragedy we saw today. 

Social media does not need to act at its worst and the American people do not need to be this polarized. As a nation we are at a crossroads. We can condemn this action, find our commonality in nonviolence, and heal together as a nation or we can take up arms whenever we do not agree with each other and throw away the freedoms of speech, press, and expression.

I am optimistic that the American people will do as they always have and make the right choice.