Who are we?

How do we define ourselves?

The Left? Liberals? Progressives? Conservatives? Far one-way-or-the-other leftists and rightists?

Progressives! Is that what we think we are? How have we progressed? From where? To where? And to what end?

A man was shot. A man named Charlie Kirk. A debater. A scholar. A blogger. A modern man. Father. Husband. Citizen. Plain old Joe. American. Opinionated American. Like the rest of us. Our fellow American. Just like you and me.

Remember that phrase? Our fellow Americans? Politicians used to throw it around a lot back in the day. It rings a bell.

He was shot by a sniper. A military assassin. A military assassination.

Cold. Calculated. Clean, even. Neat.

The kind you see in movies. The day of the Jackel. Charles de Gaulle just barely missed. A hair’s breadth away. The bullet almost cleaned his morning shave for him.

Bang! Boom! Dead! That’s how it works, mostly.

Just like that. Whether from a grassy knoll or the corner of a book depository. Point blank by a blatant assassin from two feet away. Or from 200 meters away from a calculated, planned, choreographed extermination. Just like a bug zapper.

Bang! Zap! Dead!

He’s dead.

A man is dead.

For speaking his mind.

In a free society.

To free speaking people.

Young people.

In a university.

Young people who wanted to hear what he wanted to say.

As is their right.

Who were willing to listen to what he was willing to say.

As was his right.

And then decide for themselves if they agreed with what he said.

As is everyone’s right.

Like a free society should work.

And they shot him for it.

John F. Kennedy. Robert F. Kennedy. Martin Luther King.

Dead. Dead. Dead.

Dead for speaking truth to power. And power struck back in the only way it knows how to.

Powerfully. Brutally. Deadly.

Last year in Pennsylvania it was the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. A nation was shocked. As was right. We’d better be shocked. If not, then God help us.

Agree with him? Loath him? Wish he would just shut the fuck up? Wish Donald Trump and all he stands for would just go away and disappear in a plume of his own hubris? POOF! Sometimes I do, too. OK. A lot of times I do. But then I think, “What comes next? If Donald goes, who takes his place? Be careful what you wish for.”

After all. My opinions are as free as yours.

But who wanted him dead? What sick mind wants that?

Who’s next?

My God. What have we become? Where are we going?

And what will we be when we get there?

Pray for the soul of America. While it’s still worth praying for.