Reflecting on this Time (Ezra Klein)
“Last week, Charlie Kirk was murdered while speaking at Utah Valley University. His murder has shaken me pretty deeply. In the days after his assassination, when I would close my eyes, I just kept imagining a bullet going through a neck.
But it disturbed me in a different way when I would open my eyes and look online to see some of Kirk's allies declaring war, insisting that normal politics had failed, that the time to cleanse this country of the radical left, whatever that means, had come. When I'd see some of Kirk's critics mocking or reveling in his murder, sharing clips of his worst moment, suggesting in one way or another that he deserved this, that we were better off. This was not everybody, it was not most of us, it never is.
But the nature of online algorithms means that it makes for a lot of what the most politically engaged see of each other. I could just feel the temperature rising. I don't think we have ever felt in my lifetime as close to some kind of violent national rupture.
Because it's not just Kirk. In the last few years, a bullet nearly ended Donald Trump's[…]”
From The Ezra Klein Show: We Are Going to Have to Live With One Another, Sep 16, 2025
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id1548604447?i=1000727021807&r=62
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