Assassination Marks A Nation Broken

Two days after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, my inbox floods with death wishes, exposing a nation where democracy is unraveling and hatred now paints me and others the target.

Guest article by Michael Cohen. Follow him on Substack for more by clicking here.

Since writing my Substack piece yesterday, “Who Is Next For Speaking Out?”, the reactions have been all over the place. Some of you reached out with heartfelt words, offering appreciation for my honesty, my humanity, my attempt to process a tragic event with rawness rather than calculation. To those people, I say thank you. Your compassion is a lifeline in moments when it feels like the entire world is determined to drag me under.

But then there’s the other side—the darker, uglier one. The emails, the DMs, the anonymous comments laced with expletives. Wishing me harm. Calling for my death. It’s the kind of bile that sticks to your skin even after you close the app, like a toxic residue of America’s fractured soul.

And here’s the thing: it all comes in the wake of another senseless tragedy. Two days ago, Charlie Kirk was assassinated. This isn’t just another headline; it’s a grim reminder of how poisoned our country has become. A man who built his platform preaching the righteousness of guns, the sanctity of the Second Amendment, and the inevitability of death as the “cost of freedom” is now himself the victim of the very culture he helped inflame.

At an April 5, 2023, event hosted by TPUSA Faith, the religious arm of Turning Point USA, Kirk said:

“I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”

Prudent. Rational. Gun deaths as a trade-off. That was the deal he endorsed. And now, after his assassination, we’re left with the wreckage of that logic. The grief, the chaos, the anger, the fear—none of it feels prudent. None of it feels rational. It feels senseless. It feels human, and unbearably tragic.

Charlie Kirk’s Killer IN CUSTODY

And still, instead of using this moment to step back, to reassess, to look inward, we’ve doubled down. My inbox and social feeds are evidence of it. Hatred spewed at me as if I pulled the trigger. Messages gleefully wishing for my demise, as though the assassination of one man justifies the assassination of another. This isn’t political discourse anymore; it’s warfare by proxy, with each of us who put ourselves out there marked as targets.

My friend Anthony Scaramucci—who, like me, knows the cost of being chewed up and spit out by Trump’s orbit—said it best: this is a moment when the President should have invited Biden, Obama, Bush, and Clinton to the White House. Imagine that picture for a second: five presidents standing together, saying, We may not agree on many things, but this must stop.

Wouldn’t that have been a moment of healing? Wouldn’t it have sent a message deeper than any tweet, any press release, any hollow “thoughts and prayers”? And selfishly, yes, I’ll admit it: wouldn’t it have been powerful if I were included in that idea? To stand side by side, after everything we’ve both endured, and say: If we can stand together, so can you.

But instead, we live now in an America where Ben Shapiro cancels his weekend event. AOC cancels hers too. Not because they’ve lost their voice, but because it’s unsafe to use it. Unsafe to speak. Unsafe to dissent. Unsafe to exist online without being buried under a tidal wave of threats and vitriol.

This is not healthy for a democracy. Let me repeat that: this is not healthy for a democracy. When people retreat from public life out of fear, when leaders cower behind their security details, when ordinary citizens are reduced to avatars of rage and revenge, the entire system begins to crumble.

And maybe I feel this too personally, because I am being bombarded right now by the very same forces. I scroll through my feed and see the split screen of America: compassion from strangers, right next to gleeful fantasies about my death. It chips away at you. You tell yourself you’re strong enough to take it, but the truth is none of us are built for this level of sustained hatred.

What happened to Charlie Kirk should not be a punchline. It should not be an opportunity to gloat or to threaten the next person in line. It should be a wake-up call that this madness must end. Violence has no political allegiance. It doesn’t care if you’re left or right, progressive or conservative, a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent. Violence just takes.

We can’t allow this to become our normal. We can’t allow ourselves to write off assassinations, mass shootings, or death threats as simply the price of living in America. Because once we accept that, the very idea of democracy dies with it.

What we need are leaders standing together, even for a single moment, to say enough is enough. We need to remind ourselves that human life is more sacred than political power—that unity, even if brief, can heal wounds that hatred only makes worse.

Until then, I’ll do as many of you have asked of me: I’ll keep writing. I’ll keep going live. I’ll keep putting my voice out there, even while I am told daily to shut up and die. Because the alternative is silence, and silence is surrender. I will not surrender—not to the hate, not to the fear, and not to the belief that this is as good as it gets. It’s not. It can’t be. We deserve better. And for Charlie Kirk, for his family, for every victim of America’s gun obsession, we must demand better.

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