Daily Herald opinion: The too-frequent, illusive obvious: In wake of horrific killing, we cannot let ‘the extremes pull the rest of us over the edge’

What does one say when the only things that can be said are obvious?

That the murder of a young political activist in his prime is horrifying and unacceptable.

That his loss will be most devastating for his parents, his wife and his two children, and they deserve our sympathy to its full depth.

That making martyrs of people with whom you disagree hurts your cause more than it hurts theirs.

That violence is never acceptable in settling political differences.

That our nation’s politics have become too polarized.

That social media is too harshly turning up the temperature of our disagreements.

That we all need to be more tolerant, more understanding and less personal in debating the issues we care about.

What does one say when everything that can be said has already been said — and many, many times before?

Perhaps it is most important to reflect on what one should not say in the aftermath of the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.

That he had it coming because of controversial statements he made.

That his murder shows the mindset of every person who disagreed with him.

That we and those who agree with us are unfailingly right and anyone who disagrees with us is unfailingly wrong.

That it is time for unrelenting conflict.

Reasonable reaction to Kirk’s death has followed the former train, and should continue to do so. Sadly, too many emotional, dangerous reactions have followed the latter.

The former is the better way. The only way that can move our country onto a constructive, peaceful path.

Many in the suburbs who knew Charlie Kirk in his formative years leading up to his graduation from Wheeling High School no doubt have their own personal connections to him outside of his politics and must be processing his death in ways that are intimate for every individual. But for the rest of us and the rest of the country who know him solely by his political persona, his public comments or his social media presence, this is also a time for sadness, a time for reflection and a time for self-evaluation.

And, there is an urgency to that time that perhaps we have not felt before in the several well-known occasions of such outrages by persons of diverse points of view in recent months and years. This growing urgency is evidence that we have not well heeded the lessons of the past — including, but not limited to, such politicized violence as two attempts on the life of Republican President Donald Trump during the 2024 political campaign; the 2011 mass shooting outside an Arizona grocery story in which six people died and Democratic U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords was seriously injured; the 2017 shooting at a congressional baseball practice in which four people were wounded, including Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise; the 2022 arrest of a man apparently planning to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh; the brutal 2022 attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in their San Francisco home; the April arson apparently set in an attempt to assassinate the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania; and the June attacks in Minnesota on Democratic state leaders in Minnesota that left the House speaker, her husband and a state senator dead.

This ought to be an eye-opening litany to the risks confronting our country from within. Indeed, it is. So, we cannot but agree with President Donald Trump when he says, as he did in an address to the nation Wednesday, “It's time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year.”

And we cannot but disagree with the president when he also repeats messages that place the blame for all this demonization on Democrats or simply “the radical left.”

His own rhetoric has surely inflamed our political discourse, and if he is truly to show the leadership that he and political leaders of both parties need to be demonstrating at this time, he will focus on the “consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree” and urge among his followers and his detractors alike a more restrained and more tolerant dialogue, now and always.

History tells us there is not much hope of that from the president, nor likely from many other leaders on both sides of the partisan divide. Bruce Hoffman, a senior fellow for counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council on Foreign Relations, expressed the quandary of leadership in an interview with ABC News.

“In the past,” he said, “we had elected officials that would seek to bring the country together rather than to cast blame. We'll have to see what in the coming days our national leaders have to say about this, and whether they can be effective in lowering the temperature.”

In the absence of hope for such leadership, it is up to the rest of us — those who truly value the diversity of views and freedom of expression our country values — to control our responses. We can, and we must.

As Garen Wintermute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at University of California, Davis, told the New York Times: “The task we face now is to not let the people at the extremes pull the rest of us over the edge with them. We need to make our rejection of political violence clear.”

There is protection that can help put us up to that task. It is found in repeating all the things that are obvious and all those that, yes, have been said before — until, finally, we adhere to them. And, of course, we must also remember to reject all those things that should not be said.