Leaders Mourn and Move On

Death in our time is not random, but strategic. It is not the only strategy.

The death of Charlie Kirk.

I have watched many of Charlie Kirk’s YouTube videos as he interacts with young adults on college campuses across the country. Having spent much of my career working with young people, 11 years to 30 years old, I identify with his approach of respectful interaction in the context of social and political debate.

The reality is that most people cannot do that because they are unwilling to place the person above their ideology. You can see it on the news programs and podcasts that promote a specific ideological perspective. Whether liberal or conservative, it doesn’t matter. Treating people with dignity and respect is the only way to convince someone of your perspective.

Charlie listened to these young people, responding to their thoughts and opinions. He treated them with grace and dignity, granting them the respect that many people from my generation do not.

For many of the young people from the Millennial, GenZ, and GenAlpha generations this will become a moment of remembrance that they will not forget.

In particular, the gathering of students at Utah Valley University in Orem, will have an experience that will stay with them the rest of their lives. I spoke at the university in 2019. These are kind, intelligent young men and women. Now, they have been subjected to the horror of a political assassination.

Let’s place this killing in context. Then, let’s talk about how to respond.

The Medium is the Political

Charlie Kirk’s assassination is a The Spectacle of the Real event.

Twelve years ago, when I wrote that essay, I was responding to the bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Then,I wrote that the bombings …

“… were watched by millions on television and discussed across all social media platforms and in online communities. The event, though, was mostly absorbed through pictures. The bomb at the finish line exploding over and over again. The pictures of the injured and maimed being wheeled away to rescue workers and hospitals. The faces of the two brothers as they became known as the bombers. Facts were few in number; reporting rich in conjecture, and all born through images that touched our emotions.

Fueled by a 24/7 news cycle, actual news - a statement of "facts" that an event, an accident, a death, an agreement, a visit or something has taken place, described in the traditional journalistic parlance of "who, what, when and where" - is transformed into a spectacle of opinion and virtual reality driven by the images of faces speaking words of crisis, fear, and self-righteous anger. Televised analysis - more important than the "facts" of the story- drives the news through the ambiguity of the visual image and is its source of validation.”

The day before, The Spectacle was of the young Ukrainian woman knifed to death on public transit in Charlotte. It too became a context for political expediency.

I mourn her death, too.

Death by violence is in part a vehicle for the manipulation of public opinion and a strategy for the exercise of political control.

How many close members of President Trump’s cabinet and inner circle are now talking with their spouses about increasing security around their family or leaving public service because of the inherent danger from their political opponents?

Who are their political opponents? If I am correct that The Spectacle of the Real presents a false reality, then contrived conflicts on screen do not reveal the full story.

The terror of political violence is not knowing who the opponent actually is. This is the diversion that The Spectacle of the Real creates. On the one hand, there are the media organizations that use events like this to increase viewership. Am I being too cynical? I don’t think so.

The Spectacle of the Real is a culture not unlike The Dark Pattern culture that Guido Palazzo described to me during our podcast conversation. People within large institutional structures develop ethical blindness because they cannot see how their opinions or actions have any relevance beyond their job.

The course of development for modern organizations has been to suppress the natural instinct to take personal initiative to create impact that makes a difference that matters, which is my understanding of leadership. The Structure of organizations are mediums of control. How many times do we need to hear “Trust the Process” before we realize that we should first question the process in order to know where the process actually leads?

This is the media culture that politics operates in. However, this is a subset of a larger, more hidden culture that has a global and historical reach.

Death is the Context

My sense of mourning isn’t random or occasional. It is perpetual. There is a part of me that has been in mourning since I was a child.

My first awakening to the strategic use of killing public figures came fifty-two years ago, as a ten-year-old sitting in my fifth-grade classroom on a Friday afternoon. Our principal came over the loudspeaker to tell us that President Kennedy had been shot and killed. Throughout that weekend, we were presented with this perspective.

A single shooter from a position high on a building, surrounded by crowds of admirers, shot and killed a young man who millions loved as a leader of hope and freedom.

Then later, we began to hear about another shooter on “the grassy knoll.”

A year ago, the same scenario played out as presidential candidate Donald Trump was shot at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. We still do not know what went on there. This is how political terror works.

As I have lived my life, I have come to see that death is not an accident of history, but a strategic exercise in The Spectacle of Control. There is nothing new about this. It explains every war of the past century.

I trace this unbroken stream of control back to the origins of the First World War. The Great War as it was also known, marked the end of the European governments led by aristocratic families and the emergence of global governance by bureaucrats. The first global organizations were formed in the aftermath of the War-to-End-All-wars, a statement by H.G. Wells that President Woodrow Wilson adopted. It was not the war to end war, but the beginning of perpetual war.

Political assassinations are an extension of the violence of war.

From my perspective, we are still fighting that war. The names of the players, the states, and the political motivations have changed. What has not changed is the idea that as long as a nation is at war, it has power over its people.

It is naive to think that simply voting better people into office will bring peace. The issue isn’t democracy or constitutional republicanism. It is rather how do the people hold their elected officials accountable for the state of the nation. At the corporate level, this is what I wrote about in my two short books: Seeing Below The Surface of Things: The Brokenness of the Modern Organization and Where Did Trust Go?: Restoring Authority and Accountability in Organizations.

The reality is that we are governed by systems of control. We are not managed, but controlled by feelings of threat, creating fear, anxiety, and passivity.

I wrote about this perspective early last year in my essay Synthesis Transition to the Future. I wrote,

“People in my generation, born before 1970, can talk about the difference between today and fifty years ago. Yet, we don’t really see how all this came about. We can believe that what we had in the past needs to be restored. But the conditions that we had way back in those days are unrecoverable. The world is dramatically different today than it was when I was a child. There is no comparison. We are living in a different world.

In a similar way, being born a digital native after the advent of the digital age may bring similar feelings of longing for the good old days of the past. Your generation feels this difference as inequality. You tell me that you see things as being unfair, uncertain, and disappointing. Together, we need to recognize that the world we now live in was not an accident of history but the result of the deliberate intention by people and organizations who have the financial means and capacity to act in a way to affect everyone across our world.”

Wrap your head around this idea.

Is it possible and realistic to believe that every crisis of the past quarter-century was planned and executed to create chaos?

With the chaos came opportunities for those who are in leadership positions in government and business to profit and gain privilege and power.”

While I mourn the loss of life to political and government action, I know that I have no control over what happens. Where I do have control is in convincing people, especially young people, that they have great potential for making a difference in the world.

As I look at Charlie Kirk, here is a young man who, by the age of 31, was performing to his potential. Put aside his relationship to Donald Trump. Just look at the man and his effect upon young people. He was not breeding fear and anxiety. He was saying to them that their lives can be more than what they have found it to be.

I mourn for each person that I meet who seems to believe that their life does not matter. They are exhibits of the control function of The Spectacle of the Real. They are receiving signals of identification from people who see them as vehicles for securing their own position of influence within the culture. This is why I wrote,

“These televised events aren't conversations seeking truth, but, rather, people talking at and past one another in a game of leveraging images for social and political influence. We are drawn to the image on the screen of these "experts" having something to say that is meaningful, hoping that at some point some sense of the moment will be revealed, bringing reality into view.”

While the medium is political and the context is death, the reality is that life is more than what is presented to us. It is more than these pretty faces on the screen representing the simulation of control.

Leaders Mourn and Move On

My social media feed has been filled with sadness, obfuscation, and talk of vengeance. This is the way of The Spectacle of the Real. We become trapped in The Eternal Present as we try to make sense of something that has no logic to it.

Leaders recognize that a tragedy like the killing of Charlie Kirk is not the end of the world. It is traumatic and sticks with us. Yet, we also know that if we simply slip into pessimism and feelings of powerlessness, the people who perpetrated this crime against a man, his family, and his nation will succeed. They will know that political assassinations work to create less vigilance to do what is in the best interest of the nation.

What is that?

I have spent a lot of time studying the course of human history, especially since the outbreak of the First World War. I realize that what thwarts evil is goodness, faith, and persistence.

In other words, where there is a persistent, residual culture of values that persists because it resides in the relationships of the people.

This persistent culture of values is found where people treat one another with respect, kindness, gratitude, and openness.

I know many people with whom I disagree. I have been treated very badly by some of them because I don’t believe as they do. Yet, I still want what is best for them. I don’t want them to be hurt, to lose a loved one to violence, or be publicly humiliated because their ideology becomes an embarrassment to them.

My advice is that after an appropriate time of mourning, we move on. Let's speak about what this means for two different groups of people.

People who opposed Charlie Kirk

Charlie was a decent human being. As a result, he was a lightning rod for those whose political ideology has no place for any other way of thinking. Many of you resemble what has been termed, Trump Derangement Syndrome. In my post from last year, The Spectacle of Trump Hatred, I wrote,

“Trump hatred is a mass hysteria phenomenon that is an expression of a society of control. I am non-partisan and apolitical. Yet, when I spoke with some people about Trump … I was accused of being a Trump fanatic, insane, and an enemy of democracy. The control mechanism is Trump hatred. It rationalizes all sorts of false claims and serves as the perfect vehicle for the implementation of other mechanisms of control. …

We are at a transition point in human history. The future is uncertain. There is no progress forward from the society of control. We are moving through an end that is an end. But this end is not final.

For decades, I’ve thought about this progression of changes that have marked Western society for two or three millennia. While time has moved forward as our watches and calendars tell us, the reality is that we have continued to enter moments of ending and beginning.

There are those who have thought that if the assassination of Donald Trump had been accomplished, a second Civil War would occur. I hear that but do not see that happening. I believe this perception of the American public as violent, offensive reactionaries is a simulacrum. What is a simulacra? Gary Genosko, in Baudrillard and Signs, writes of the science of signs in comparison to Plato’s perspective.

“Plato draws a distinction in the realm of image-making between an iconic likeness and a semblance. To the extent that the former image ‘participates’ in the Idea of the thing of which it is an icon or a copy, it is endowed with ‘resemblance’. The latter image does not resemble the Idea of the thing of which it is a semblance or a simulacrum because it does not participate in the Idea. A simulacrum only seems to be a likeness.”

I believe this explains the society of control and Trump hatred. These ‘ideas’ do not represent reality. But it is just enough of a semblance of reality to seem to be real. The control is what we allow them to have. For those of us who are older, we were taught as children, in the institutions of the society of discipline, to be rule-followers. Some of us respected the institution but always questioned the rules. This is how being a rule follower within the society of control takes away our agency and responsibility for our lives and the lives of our family and communities.

When I hear someone express their hatred of Donald Trump, I ask them, “What do you know about him by direct experience? If not, where did you come to have this opinion of him?” If they tell me the source of their opinion, I then ask, ”Do they have a reason or motivation to hate him that is personal and prejudiced towards him?” I believe we must ask these questions about everyone in the public eye. The simulacrum of political opinion is essentially propaganda, which is the establishment of a control mechanism.

I’m convinced that the forces of control will do themselves in. Their pattern of behavior is to overspend to control, to overplan to control, and to never allow accountability to interrupt their authority to control the outcomes of the world.

The message of control we receive is that the people live by violence and bloodshed. Instead, I see increasing indifference and resistance to being controlled.”

Trump hatred, and the hatred of people associated him, like Charlie Kirk, is violence seeking harm. You may want to do away with guns. But you will vote for candidates who will continue to practice war. You will continue to patronize celebrities and films that glorify guns and violence.

For you to move on, does not mean you change you opinion of President Trump. It means you change you behavior in relation to people who believe differently than you. Here, Charlie Kirk is an example to you.

People who believed in Charlie Kirk

I am not telling you to stop mourning. I am telling you not to accept the notion that his death was somehow a defeat for President Trump and the MAGA movement.

I am suggesting that you emulate Charlie in your behavior. Don’t cut people out of your life because they are not MAGA. Instead, listen and ask questions. Treat them with kindness and respect. If you cannot because you are angry, then the shooter as accomplished his goal. He has turned you from the values that should define your behavior into a person of hatred.

I know many people who came to believe in Trump during 2016 campaign. Most of them had been Obama supporters. When I asked them why they changed. They gave a range of answers. But most of them told me that he gave them hope for the future.

If you allow Charlie Kirk’s death to rob you of your hope for the future, then the forces of violence have neutralized your value to society.

What the Rest of Us Should Do

It is vitally important that you claim some sense of the big picture. You need to see that what we are experiencing is not new and is not a simple binary decision between good and evil, Democrats and Republicans, and leftists and conservatives. Those binary constructions are products of The Spectacle of the Real. They oversimplify a very complex world.

My advice is to step back and begin to think for yourself. I am preparing a post on the kinds of questions we need to be regularly asking to help us grasp the reality of the world that exists around us.

May God be with the Kirk family, the American people, and our leaders who have a chance to change how we live together as citizens and neighbors.