Polarising politics and the normalisation of hate in American public life may just have cost Donald Trump’s popular supporter, Charlie Kirk, his life. The ultra-right-wing activist and CEO of Turning Point was shot dead whilst addressing an audience at Utah Valley University as part of his controversial American Comeback Trip across campuses.

Famous or even infamous as the cheerleader for the Trump brand of politics, Kirk had expounded contentiously on matters like climate change, the civil rights movement, minorities, gun control, LGBTQ etc, that valorised Trump’s regressive stands on each of these issues. Ironically, despite a surge in shooting incidents across campuses and schools, Kirk had recklessly conflated the same with the preservation of the Second Amendment (the right to keep and bear weapons). He had stated, “It’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights... That is a prudent deal.” It was a hardline “Trumpish” (il) logic that may have critically contributed to his own life.

Stupefyingly, even Trump had survived a gun attack during his campaign — but has been recklessly demolishing various progressive laws, one after the other, since his successful return to the White House. For once Trump was right in calling the shooting an unacceptable outgrowth of overheated rhetoric.

But the invaluable........

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