On Aug. 22, Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee, was brutally slain on the Charlotte, N.C. light-rail by a schizophrenic man who had previously been arrested 14 times. Plenty of commentary surrounded the aftermath of his arrest; Charlotte mayor Vi Lyles issued a statement arguing that the “tragic situation [shed] light on problems with society safety nets related to mental healthcare and the systems that should be in place.” She then issued an even more strongly worded follow-up statement calling for “a bipartisan solution to address repeat offenders” in response to criticism that her initial response offered no specific action.
Some reports mention that a GoFundMe was started for Zarutska’s killer, with some claiming that he was just as much a victim as she was. The Charlotte city council received updates from transit leaders on the killing before taking a break from their meeting to recognize a council member’s birthday with cake. The murder even received national coverage, with The New York Times writing about the “Firestorm on the Right” that ensued after the killing, while also briefly discussing the actual murder.
On Sept. 10, conservative provocateur Charlie Kirk was assassinated with a shot through the neck as he answered a question about gun violence. In the aftermath of his murder, to no one’s surprise, people also had thoughts. The internet was rife with commentary suggesting that perhaps by going on campuses and articulating conservative arguments (if they can even be called that), Kirk himself was enacting violence on certain groups. The vice president of the United States went on Kirk’s podcast and called for disunity. Others remarked on the irony of his murder, given that Kirk himself once asserted that the Second Amendment was “worth [the] cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year.”
We endlessly comment on these killings like any other news event we see in our notifications. “Why’d Charlie Kirk’s shooter scrawl ‘OWO what’s this?’ on his bullet casings?” “Is this violence justified, given that its target was someone I dislike?” “Sure, this individual was violent, but given how many times he was failed by the system, can we really blame him?” “We talk about this violent incident, when really, we should be talking about what it says about the problems that exist in our society.”
I have one more question to contribute to the public discourse: Have we all gone insane? The violence itself is the problem that exists in our society. If someone asks, “what does the violence mean?” we must reply that the violence is meaningless and senseless. When we respond to death like any other item in our feed, we accept that it is an inevitable tragedy that comes with living in civilized society, like a hurricane or tornado or any other act of God.
But it isn’t! It’s people doing things unto people! Violence is not an inevitable outcome of ordered society; it is the result of deranged individuals acting on their impulses. How many people in the country suffer through hardship without harming so much as a hair on another of their fellow citizens’ heads? The downstream consequences of accepting violence as yet another thing to be endlessly remarked upon are disastrous for our society.
One of the core responsibilities of a society is to keep its citizenry secure; if we admit any exceptions to this responsibility on the basis of discursive expediency, we admit that our own lives are potentially legitimate casualties in the service of politics. If we claim that Charlie Kirk’s killing was justified on the basis of his repulsive ideas, what does that mean for the next person who decides to speak on a college campus on behalf of ideas that others might dislike? If we excuse Zarutska’s killing on the basis of “systemic failings,” what does that mean for the next person to board a light-rail train? Imagine how terrible it is for your bloody end to become the beginning of a bloody, transient media spectacle. What an awful thing it is for commentators to play political calculus with your demise before allowing your memory to fade away.
When killings occur, we cannot engage in the sophistry of excuses. When murder happens, we cannot shake our heads and mutter “how sad” to ourselves. When violence breaks out, we can’t finger-point at our political adversaries. When it takes place, we need to put our rhetoric away, condemning and persecuting its instigators to the fullest extent that we can.
TED KWEE-BINTORO is a College senior studying mathematical economics. He currently serves as the editor-in-chief of Under the Button on the 141st Board. His email is tedkb@sas.upenn.edu.
