Dick Polman: Charlie Kirk and the test of empathy

There's an unwritten law in our doomscrolling dystopia that when something bad happens, everyone shall speedily post a clickable opinion, something that's often little more than eye candy with empty calories. So imagine how remiss yours truly has been. I'm apparently the very last member of the far-flung commentariat to weigh in on the horrific public death of Charlie Kirk.Call me crazy, but I felt it was wise to wait nearly 48 hours, to catch my breath and think about things in a microclimate of calm. I even boycotted social media, which in those 48 hours had predictably become a soul-sapping cesspool of lunacy.I also reminded myself that, believe it or not, most Americans do not live there.I've been thinking a lot about the importance of empathy, how it connects us with one another, and how its absence can imperil us. An old quote from Hannah Arendt, the late philosopher and scholar of totalitarianism, has been rattling loose in my head: "The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism."I also recall that Charlie Kirk made it abundantly clear that he had no use for empathy. In his words, "Empathy is a new-age term that's done a lot of damage."Hence my personal challenge: Feeling empathy for a person — trying to understand him, trying to walk in his shoes — when that person feels no empathy for others.No empathy, especially, for Black professionals ("If I see a Black pilot, I'm going to be like, 'Boy I hope he's qualified.'"). Or for Black women ("You do not have brain processing power to otherwise be taken seriously, you have to go steal a white person's slot"). Or for the victims of America's gun violence epidemic, including schoolchildren ("I think it's worth the cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights"). Or for single women ("the most depressed, suicidal, anxious, and lonely in America's history … so they start to lash out at the rest of society"). Or for Jews ("Some of the largest funders of cultural Marxist ideas. … Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them"). Or for gay people (who are "corrupting your children").OK, Kirk makes it hard for me.But I can still put myself in his shoes. I invite you to do it as well, to sit on a stage in a spirit of open and civil debate (which he routinely did), and to perhaps feel, if only for a millisecond, the thud of a bullet canceling your consciousness forever. That is America at its primal worst, and I find it sickening that some find Kirk's death grist for jokes and celebration.The place to defeat someone like Kirk is in the public square. Perhaps Kirk's most ghoulish critics should be asking themselves why he was so successful there, and what needs to be done to win over the impressionable young people who've dug his message.Nobody deserves summary execution. Nobody's kids deserve to be orphaned, and nobody's wife deserves to be widowed. To feel otherwise, as Arendt wrote, is a symptom of encroaching barbarism. It would be nice, of course, if the other side felt the same way — I'm referring to the MAGA leaders who evinced no empathy in June when ex-Minnesota House Democratic Speaker and her husband were assassinated — but I see no value in responding in kind. I can't police their souls, only my own.David French, the sane conservative columnist, says, "We can't let the worst voices define how we respond to this moment." I suspect that most Americans agree. For the sake of civility, let's take a breath and live our best selves.Copyright 2025 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes the Subject to Change newsletter. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.comThat is America at its primal worst, and I find it sickening that some find Kirk's death grist for jokes and celebration.