Stop the Whataboutism: Charlie Kirk’s Murder Demands Our Full Attention

Those unwilling to condemn the brutal murder of Charlie Kirk on September 10th have reached for a coward’s shield: whataboutism.

I’ve seen it everywhere. What about Minnesota? What about school shootings? As if invoking another tragedy erases the one directly in front of us. As if deflection is a substitute for moral clarity.

It isn’t.

And it’s nothing new. When Iryna Zarutska was stabbed on a train in broad daylight, conservatives condemned it without hesitation. On the left? Many sneered, “What about Gaza?” Violence is always weighed against some other violence, until no one is ever forced to confront the truth of the moment we are actually living in.

The truth is this: Charlie Kirk’s assassination is not just another news cycle story. It demands honesty. It demands courage. And it demands our full, undiluted attention.

The logic behind leftist whataboutism is absurd. That caring about one tragedy means you can’t care about another. Of course, I care about school shootings. Of course, I care about other murders. But here’s the difference: when those horrors occur, Americans across the spectrum condemn them. Nobody celebrated when Catholic children were shot at Mass. No one claimed Sandy Hook was justified. Yet today, a loud and gleeful chorus openly delights in Charlie Kirk’s death. That is why this moment requires us to mourn him loudly, unapologetically, and without distraction.

This was not a random act of violence. It was a targeted political assassination. That fact alone places it in the company of JFK, Martin Luther King Jr., and other killings that changed the course of history. Charlie Kirk transformed American politics, especially on college campuses, in ways most still don’t fully grasp. He inspired millions, built a massive movement, and altered the trajectory of conservatism for a generation. To dismiss his murder with a lazy “what about X” is to trivialize the reality that a leader of this magnitude was deliberately taken from us. If violence is accepted as a legitimate way to silence speech, then America as we know it is already over.

Charlie died because he believed what we believe. That makes this not only a political moment, but a deeply personal one for many of us. His death is proof that there are people in this country who want us gone—and who feel morally justified in saying so. Whataboutism isn’t just a dumb distraction. It’s a shield that protects the left from grappling with the fact that their own side openly applauds violence against political opponents.

We already live in an age of fractured attention, with social media pushing us from outrage to outrage, convincing us that if we don’t post about every tragedy, we don’t care. But that isn’t true—and it isn’t human. We were not meant to process this much grief, this much horror, all at once. Our souls demand focus. And sometimes, one story is so big, so consequential, that it demands all of us stop and mark it. Charlie Kirk’s murder is one of those moments.

I will not apologize for pausing here. I will not be guilted into diluting my grief with lists of unrelated tragedies. This is a turning point. It is one of those rare, devastating moments that must be faced in full. And I will not be bullied into looking away.