APPROXIMATELY 24 HOURS on from his being wounded fatally from a rooftop, the world now knows who the late Charlie Kirk was.

The disgustingly gory details have been seen by countless millions, courtesy of camera phones and social media. Prior to yesterday’s senseless tragedy, Kirk was instantly recognisable only to those of us who follow American politics avidly.

First and foremost, Kirk will widely be seen outside the United States as just the latest casualty of a uniquely gun-centric culture. To me, as someone who will forever be unapologetically proud to be an American, this twisted societal love affair with firearms is both sickening and depressing. Indeed, the dead man himself was a champion of the famous or infamous, depending on your perspective, Second Amendment to the US Constitution. Yet there is a lot more to Charlie Kirk and to what befell him than this.

And that’s probably why I found myself unable to sleep during the night as I processed the fast-breaking news of what had transpired on the campus of Utah Valley University. Charlie Kirk had been shot. Chaotic scenes ensured. Kirk had been stabilised. He lost his fight for life. Law enforcement had arrested the shooter. No, the purported perpetrator had not been apprehended. And this deranged person remains on the loose at the time of writing.

It has come less than four months after Democratic state representative for Minnesota Melissa Hortman and her husband were assassinated in June while Democratic state senator John Hoffman and his wife were shot at their home, and three years after the violent assault of Paul Pelosi, the husband of senior Democratic figure Nancy Pelosi. Last year also saw the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania. The 20-year-old gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was killed by the Secret Service.

But it was the broader reaction and analysis on traditional and social media to the killing of Kirk, a 31-year-old man with a beautiful wife and two gorgeous children he adored, that I could not turn away from last night. For it revealed so much about how broken the American polity is, while simultaneously offering a few rays of light. What I am convinced of, though, is that the events of 10 September 2025 will be very consequential, in ways we cannot be entirely sure of, for the future of the land of my birth.

Who was Charlie Kirk? In a sense, as a community college dropout, it was highly unlikely that he would ascend incredibly rapidly to stand among the most influential champions of conservatism in the US – in particular, the rather Trumpian, jingoistic cocktail of right-wing messaging that has displaced the more traditional and genteel brand that preceded it.

Ironically, given that he did not attain an undergraduate degree, Kirk’s route to the top led through third-level campuses, where he sought to initially persuade and then mobilise students who were not favourably disposed to the leftist views that undeniably permeate academia in the US and beyond. He addressed national Republican gatherings, hosted popular radio programmes and podcasts, and continued to tour campuses throughout his career, flying a provocative “you’re being brainwashed” flag to arouse curiosity and maximise audiences.

Despite an early scepticism, Kirk grew close to Donald Trump. There is no doubt that he helped the sitting president perform far better than pundits expected with Generation Z in 2024. He was objectively of the hard right, espousing uncompromising, and at times offensive and hurtful sentiments, often laden with conspiracies and falsehoods, on a range of topics. That said, his foes have repeatedly affirmed that he debated openly and welcomed a thorough, frank exchange of idea.

Since the graphic imagery was spread from Utah, the responsive commentary has generally fallen into three categories. First, there is a good chunk of activists on the left who sincerely posit that Kirk’s demise was actually fitting – as a staunch opponent of gun control who once opined that a certain number of deaths annually was a fair price to pay to preserve easy access to owning weapons.

They further say that his rhetoric – whether on Gaza, race relations or trans rights – was so poisonous and incendiary that he “lived by the sword and died by the sword.” They express little, if any sympathy, in the immediate wake of his passing.

Second, there is a sizeable segment on the right who allege that the left, even as they advocate tolerance for those who do not merit it, are perfectly fine with lethal violence against their political adversaries. Citing assassination attempts on President Trump and on other elected Republicans, they are currently saying that Charlie Kirk’s death should not be in vain. In their eyes, it must be a rallying cry to fight back. His fate is ample cause for more radical action in defence of their beliefs, as they see it.

Each of these diametrically divergent camps has something in common: they ought to be ashamed of themselves. They share a manifestly toxic approach to politics, which is to win at all costs. They share an uncritical conviction that they are absolutely correct. They share an immutable position that those who think differently are not only wrong, but lesser human beings for it.

And these two cohorts, who collectively are not small in number, are equally to blame for much of the rot at the core of American politics and civic discourse. The first apparently have no issue with the execution of an individual for expressing his opinion, albeit occasionally revolting. The second seem to regard compassion for those less fortunate a weakness and ignore abundant terrible deeds committed by right-wing extremists while they make coded calls for a second civil war.

Conversely, I have been heartened by what has been said by the third group, comprised of what I pray are the majority of decent women and men in the US. Their heartfelt ideologies cover the totality of the spectrum.

Nonetheless, they haven’t been engaging in political bickering or whataboutery; they are mourning a horrific homicide and sympathising with a bereft young family. I hope that they are as appalled by the vile carry-on of others as I am and will upbraid them accordingly as they endeavour to plot a course out of this morass.

But hope is in short supply now. An invisible, but very real, line in the sand has been crossed in an already deeply troubled country. I am not prone to the overdramatic. Still, I honestly fear what lies ahead.

America teeters on the brink.