I’ve never seen anything like this in my life, and I’ve been around for a while. Plus, from my reading of history nothing like this has occurred in the U.S. for many decades, maybe a century or more. But something big just happened in America. It affects culture and politics, investments and money, and it behooves us to wrap our collective brain around what occurred.
It’s the Charlie Kirk story, and it’s hard to miss. It has dominated headlines for two weeks since the guy was assassinated. There’s much to say, but indulge me as I begin in Iceland…
Your editor, recently standing on the North American plate at Reykjanes Peninsula, in southwest Iceland, with Eurasian plate in background. BWK photo.
Seismic Sociology with Tectonic Implications
On my end, the Charlie Kirk story broke just as I returned from Iceland where I kicked rocks and studied geology. Particularly, I was interested in deep-earth heat flow from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which directly connects to the earth’s mantle, but in Iceland breaches sea level and exposes two continental plates moving away from each other. (Hint: the relevancy is to ore deposits in Greenland, but that’s for other articles yet to come.)
Map of Iceland, where two tectonic plates diverge. Courtesy U.S. Geologic Survey.
As illustrated in both the map and photo above, in southwest Iceland it’s possible to stand on what’s called the Reykjanes Peninsula where the eponymous Reykjanes Ridge emerges from the Atlantic Ocean. To the west is the North American tectonic plate, and to the east is the Eurasian plate. Literally, you can stand and straddle the dividing line between two continents.
Fortunately, during my visit I didn’t have to worry about volcanic eruptions. No molten magma has exploded in the Reykjanes region since (checks notes…) back in 2024. For now, the rocks are cool – well, cool enough – and the locale is dormant. But the place is what’s called an “active hot spot” of the earth’s surface, connected by a vast, subterranean plumbing network to the deep, energetic interior. Sooner or later, on geology’s own time scale lava will flow again.
Okay, are you still with me? This was your basic geology lesson for today, and now we transition to Arizona, namely Phoenix/Glendale this past Sunday, and the Charlie Kirk memorial service. I wasn’t there in person but watched it online. Media accounts state that over 100,000 people attended the event in an NFL stadium and an adjacent, smaller venue. About another 100,000 were outside, not too far away, while tens of millions viewed the proceedings on television and other media, with major coverage in global-scale media.
Right away, with these big numbers I see a geologic analogy to “hot spots” and volcanic levels of energy; figuratively speaking, of course. Also, deep in my brain stem and in addition to half a century of geological training, I vividly recall growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1960s and living through the political assassinations of two Kennedys and a King (no relation), plus race riots at national scale.
Again, I now detect something seismic; something way more than just a whole bunch of people sharing a common experience in a venue built for football games.
That is, in addition to multitudes of everyday people who attended the Arizona memorial service, the event drew the seated power structure of U.S. governance at both the executive and legislative levels: President Trump; Vice President Vance; most Cabinet officers; many key policymaking staff; the Speaker of the House; and innumerable House and Senate members.
Oh, and who knows how many federal judges and/or Supreme Court justices may have tuned in remotely to watch? I suspect more than a few.
The memorial included a U.S. military honor guard, and in this and other ways the nominally private event was equivalent to a state funeral. And all this was for a civilian, no less, in that Charlie Kirk was not a military person or veteran, nor an elected politician. He was, well… He was Charlie.
According to those who knew him (and no, I never met him), Kirk was a polite, patient, devoutly religious and sincere guy “who never went to college,” as he often reminded people. His mission in life was boldly to go onto colleges campuses across the Republic and converse with young people about politics, religion and the general meaning of life. That, and sign-up voters for the Republican side, a job at which he and his organization was highly effective.
If you’re curious, You Tube offers thousands of videos of Kirk fielding questions and challenges from college students and others, along with his terse, pithy answers. If you watch just a handful of these videos, it’s apparent that Kirk was an articulate debater. Plus, he clearly possessed Job-like patience and astonishing tolerance for the long lines of punks, snotty jerks and self-important bozos who verbally accosted him.
For speaking his mind in public – and winning his points with logic and reason – Charlie Kirk was “labeled” by the left. You know… the usual calumnies about how he was another version of those mid-20th-century German figures and institutions; in other words, reflective of how the left thinks and processes information. And thus was Kirk demonized by an entire political and media subculture.
Then two weeks ago, Kirk was assassinated by one of those so-called “deranged lone gunmen” who seem to spring from the American soil like poison mushrooms after a rainstorm.
And this leads to a deeper point; namely, what is it that deranges a lone person to become an assassin? Because no, it’s not really that proverbial “something in the water.” More likely, it’s something in the news feed, and this is especially the case in our age of the internet and smart phones, where even the worst ideas have the opportunity to go viral.
Stated another way, it’s not as if Charlie Kirk died in a plane crash or succumbed to illness or disease. At 31 years, he certainly didn’t die of old age; not at all. He perished from targeted political violence, spurred by toxic radicalization that flows out of exposure to extreme aspects of modern American politics and political culture.
From what we know at this stage (not the full story, to be sure), Kirk’s killer was a creature of the hard left. From all evidence, shooter-boy never met Kirk, but it looks like the guy imbibed deeply of the anti-Kirk Kool-Aid peddled by innumerable media channels.
This last item helps explain the size and passion of that recent Arizona gathering; that is, grass-root religious and moral outrage, coupled-up with political power currently in office. If nothing else (and here’s where that Iceland analogy comes back into play), we now see clearly the massive, seismic tears that divide U.S. culture and society, all with global-scale effects.
Sure, everybody knows that America’s two-party system creates intense competition for power, money, jobs and more. That’s the idea: Democrat versus Republican; left versus right; progressive versus conservative; indeed, to gain and hold power, some people might actually cheat in elections if you can believe that. (Shocking, I know.)
And if the American political volcano wasn’t primed to erupt before, it sure is now. Again, think in terms of plate tectonics. That is, on one side of the rift we have North America and the U.S., a nation founded on classical ideas of reason and religion, a “New Jerusalem” so to speak. Add in how proto-America was informed by the logic and reasoning of ancient Athens; although yes, the entire edifice is now much fallen from the heights in those long-ago days of Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
On the other political-tectonic plate, we have the more recent, and very dark values of Eurasia. That is, we see on the other side the worst aspects of Marxian authoritarianism, embodied at home in the pathological, faculty-lounge politics of America’s university-leftism. The intellectual roots of these ideas run deep, but it’s fair to say that they germinated during the insane violence of the French Revolution, with its dungeons and guillotines for political enemies. And in many ways, post-1789 European politics and society have never “gotten well,” so to speak.
Kirk’s assassination wasn’t exactly Fort Sumter and maybe calling it Harper’s Ferry is a stretch. But it’s clear now that the battle lines are forming up. And I’ll leave it to others to write long papers, if not books about the new sociology that is broaching in American culture and politics. For now, let’s look at other implications of that memorial service in Arizona.
A New, Hard Political Landscape
Charlie Kirk’s memorial service was a red-pill combination of conservative politics plus unvarnished, Born-Again Christianity. The background music alone was telling; sturdy old hymns, flag and cross, and deeply religious unless it was American patriotic.
No less than The New York Times figured it out. The newspaper headlined one article, “At Kirk Service, an Extraordinary Fusion of Government and Christianity.” The sub-headline added, “The memorial reflected the degree to which conservative Christianity had melded with Republican politics in the Trump era.”
Well, yes… And in this sense Kirk’s memorial had hallmarks of a 19th century religious revival meeting. Then again, how many religious revival meetings ever drew the entire executive-legislative power structure of the country, up to and including the U.S. President, Speaker of the House, cabinet officers and many more?
It’s one thing for, say, preachers to get Biblical at a memorial service: that’s their job. But at Kirk’s Arizona service, one after another senior political figures quoted scripture. Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave a remarkable homily, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth also cited his pastor. While Vice President Vance stated that he has mentioned Jesus Christ more in the past two weeks than during his entire time in politics up to now.
And then there was the keynote speaker of all keynote speakers, President Trump, who spoke tenderly about Charlie Kirk, and with sadness and compassion towards Kirk’s wife and children, as well as others who knew the man.
But Trump is Trump, to be sure, and he unloaded on topics that range from immigration to tariffs, jobs, Social Security, crime in the streets and much more. And unlike Erika Kirk, the grieving widow who forgave her husband’s killer, Trump declared that he “hates” his enemies; although there’s context here, of course, because Trump is definitely a man whose words must be taken in context. As in, take him seriously, not literally.
To me, at least, the takeaway from the political side of the Kirk memorial was to expect a new level of “fight-fight-fight” from the Trump administration towards its opponents, certainly at home and likely abroad.
Yes, sure… The Trump administration came into office hard; it was loaded for bear, so to speak, based on plenty of history from the past decade. Recall the media lies (“Russia-Gate”), the lawsuits, the lawfare, and those two assassination attempts last year against Trump himself, which surely crystallized some attitudes.
At the same time, people who know him say that Trump is “transactional,” that he wants to make deals whether it’s for legislation or ending wars. For example, last April Trump announced massive tariffs on nations across the world, in essence to set a hard-edged negotiating tone and anchor an initial position. But as time passed, everything was negotiable and the rates dropped to much lower levels, enough to generate large government revenue gains but still allow most trade to occur.
Or consider how Trump’s initial approach to ending the war in Ukraine (“with a phone call, in 24 hours”) hasn’t panned out with Russia. And thus has Trump adapted to deal with an expensive, deadly, dangerous, ongoing conflict while still seeking an off-ramp.
But now? After the Kirk assassination? After that Arizona memorial service, with all those like-minded people in the same place, looking around and realizing their own unity and power? Hey, if you thought that the Trump administration was tight and tough, I suspect that things are about to get tighter and tougher, both at home and abroad. Strap in and brace for impact.
That’s all for now. Thank you for subscribing and reading.
