By Frank Bell, Lighthouse Point
The assassination of Charlie Kirk created three immediate reactions inside his movement. The first sought to keep operations alive -the rallies, the outreach, the network. The second focused on protecting Turning Point from opportunists or ideological dilution. Both of these , in their own way, succeeded.
But the third impulse – the belief that witnessing Kirk’s murder would awaken the conscience of the left has gone dangerously off course. What began as a hope for clarity has decayed into emotional coercion: conservatives trying to “shame” the unshakable into empathy, and the left turning mockery into a virtue signal.
Today, we see a collision between two psychological pathologies.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk created three immediate reactions inside his movement.
The first sought to keep operations alive — the rallies, the outreach, the network.
The second focused on protecting Turning Point from opportunists or ideological dilution.
Both of these, in their own way, succeeded.But the third impulse — the belief that witnessing Kirk’s murder would awaken the conscience of the left — has gone dangerously off cou
On one side, the grief idealization of a movement that’s lost its moral compass to mourning. Kirk has become both saint and symbol, and some now demand emotional conformity — not just agreement, but the right kind of grief. It’s a tragic turn, born of the right’s need to be seen as moral even in the face of evil.
On the other side, the virtue of cruelty — a twisted moral system where hatred of the “heretic” is proof of righteousness. For this crowd, saying “I’m glad he’s dead” isn’t a confession of wickedness but a badge of belonging.
These two forces now feed each other. Every conservative attempt to “reason” with cruelty only strengthens it. Every performative outpouring of virtue invites more mockery. The result is a kind of voodoo psychological war — emotional possession in digital form, where empathy and hatred are swapped like masks in a ritual theater.
Kirk’s death didn’t open a new moral conversation; it revealed that moral language itself is collapsing. The goal is no longer truth, but domination through emotion.
And yet, in that collapse, there remains one task: to reclaim clarity.
Not the clarity of tears or slogans, but of discernment — the kind that knows grief is not surrender, and that refusing to love those who celebrate death is not hatred, but sanity.