I admit it: if I were a college student today, I would have eaten up everything Charlie Kirk said. In fact, when I was a college student, I did follow someone similar, Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, and it was a short leap from him to Bill Gothard and the infamous Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts. Although I think Bright was reasonably benign, Bill Gothard was anything but benign: he was a serial sexual predator and cult leader.
But I, a white, straight, extremely insecure young woman then who had no idea who she was or what she really thought about anything, longed for strong male leadership, someone who could define me, so I didn’t have to do that hard work. I dreamed of a neat little slot where I didn’t have to think critically about the complex and essentially unanswerable questions of life, death and the life hereafter.
In other words, I sought my version of a safe prison cell. I longed to share it only with others who believed exactly as I did. Their presence would protect me from questioning the things upon which I was basing my fragile identity and my longed-for future. The walls of unquestioned beliefs were to keep me from venturing inside my troubled soul. As long as I could externalize my values, relying on others to validate them, I was safe.
I hid from any idea of true freedom.
As for some of the hateful things Kirk is reported to have said (all my knowledge of him is second-hand—I’d never heard of him until he was killed), the idea of keeping out and especially demonizing the different—be it sexual orientation, skin color, politics—would have helped me feel superior, more important, the one with the answers whose job it was to force others to agree.
And those who didn’t? Clearly, I was right; they were wrong and should be silenced. Free play of ideas had no place in my world/prison.
Sadly, I was a little “Trumpette” myself.
In other words, I was, sadly but truthfully, a little “Trumpette.” Fortunately, I didn’t have a corrupt daddy’s endless piles of money and willingness to bail me out of my stupid mistakes. Without protection from the repercussions of my ignorance and narrow-mindedness, I eventually emerged from those walls into a greater maturity and freedom, broken and bruised of course, but also, thankfully, humbled and more fully aware that I actually don’t know very much.
But our current POTUS did not have the privilege of facing the consequences of his beliefs and actions. Likely, Kirk would have also stayed protected by his surrogate Trump-daddy and thus free from facing the consequences of sowing hate and exclusion.
The prison walls of unquestioned beliefs eliminate all hope of true freedom.
Unfortunately, and without fail, that very protection turns quickly into prison walls that eliminate all hope of true freedom. Anger the all-powerful protector? Expulsion—and facing the real consequences of his words and actions—will soon follow. The very things that might have made Kirk actually a free man, free to think and grow and mature, would be the very things he would need to run from to stay in Trump’s favor and keep the money and adulation flowing in.
Absolute pronouncements and beliefs build high, thick walls with carefully guarded doors, but they do not pour a foundation for a vibrant, thriving society throbbing with free, creative, flexible, inventive people.
Real freedom is not the right to do or say anything we want—that’s chaos and lawlessness. Instead, freedom is gaining the maturity and self-control to recognize that each of us must limit ourselves to some degree to make room for true civilization and a thriving nation teeming with productive people.
And that is what we’ve lost, mostly from Trump’s example of zero limits on his egregious behavior, ever informed by the never-empty septic tank of an abyss of unaddressed interior terror.
The lack of limits has become the national role model for the very murder that has taken place. Yes, Charlie Kirk was free to say that random gun shootings are the price to pay for living in his version of a free society, and those with differing sexual orientations deserve the worst of punishments. Such proclamations made him popular and powerful.
But perhaps such words encouraged his “alleged” murderer, yet one more troubled young white male, to find his freedom to prove him right, horrific as it was.
When there are no limits, there are indeed no limits. Because that kind of society runs on fear, freedom disappears.
Trump: the least free person in the US
And that is why I say that Trump is the least free person in the US. He exhibits the same behavior as an adult as I did in my late teens: he must be surrounded by those who will keep those thick walls continually reinforced and protected from anyone burrowing a hole in or climbing over them with new or contrary ideas or truths that would set him free.
Trump lives within the prison of his beliefs. With zero internal character formation to work from, the external structures that keep him propped up must never be questioned. Because, again, he’s never had any real limits on his behavior, the Constitutional proclamation of a free press has no positive meaning for him. In fact, the idea brings the deepest terror possible because the core of his identity will crumble if he is ever proven wrong . . . on anything.
So the lies, dissemblings, attacks on others, distractions, gaslighting, military excursions, tariffs, arresting innocent people, deporting anyone with brown skin, especially unprotected children, all continue at an increasingly frenetic pace. And yes, of course, he is a fascist—that’s just a fancy political word to describe an empty, hollow semi-human with a cult-like following and a never-satisfied craving for unchecked power.
And that, above all, is our national tragedy. Too many people have bent the knee to Trump rather than helping him achieve successes with the good ideas and giving honorable resistance to the bad ones.
The price to pay has been too high—and thus, by abdicating their sworn responsibilities of protecting and defending the Constitution, his many enablers enter prisons of their own, anterooms, perhaps, to the moldy, gold-lined walls of Trump’s prison cell.
There is no way out of those cells except reclaiming, or perhaps claiming for the first time, their integrity. The American people must now rise up and do for our nation what our lawmakers are refusing to do: fight this frightening move away from a constitutional democracy with every means at our disposal.
Remember, there is no bottom to Mr. Trump’s need for power and to erase anyone, anyone, who opposes him. Never, ever forget these words by Pastor Martin Niemöller:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.
This horrible scene from the classic movie, “Gandhi,” keeps coming to mind:
Will this be necessary in the US to become free again from Trump’s continued move toward autocracy? Probably something analogous will be required.
To some degree, it is already happening with the continued moves to silence nationally broadcast comics and commentators who are openly critical of Trump. They are taking the current set of blows because the prominent law firms, universities and businesses decided self-preservation, no matter how much they had to debase themselves, was preferable to honor.
It will not stop with the current purge of critical voices. History makes this clear. Free societies are extraordinarily fragile, and people get weary of trying to maintain it. The world of Charlie Kirk, of Donald Trump, of white supremacists and zero sexual diversity beckons. It says, “Come unto me, ye who are tired of thinking for yourselves. I shall fix all your problems—all you have to do is constantly tell me how much you adore me, pile more money into my sticky-fingered coffers, and never, EVER, utter one word of criticism about me and demean to the point of destruction anyone who is not just like you.”
Is this what we want?
I hope not.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In