Mr. Kirk, whose appearances on college campuses drew ardent support and fierce condemnation, had received numerous death threats over the past year and had been traveling with a security team for months. Over dinner, Ms. Kirk implored her husband to start wearing a bulletproof vest. When he demurred, the friend suggested that Mr. Kirk speak behind bulletproof glass.
“Not yet,” Mr. Kirk replied. He said he felt confident in his team, and that there would be additional security at the Utah event. But Ms. Kirk, like several of her husband’s subordinates, had occasionally heard him imply that his life could be cut short by violence. She found herself wondering if a part of him had already surrendered to such a prospect.
It had been Ms. Kirk’s plan to accompany her husband to Utah. But her mother would be undergoing medical treatment in the Phoenix area that same day. “Home needs you,” Mr. Kirk told her. They agreed that she would instead travel with him on the next leg of the tour, to Colorado State University.
Ms. Kirk was sitting in her mother’s hospital room at 11:23 a.m. local time in Phoenix when she saw the number of her husband’s longtime assistant, Michael McCoy, appear on her phone. In retrospect, she said she knew the words — “He’s been shot!” — before Mr. McCoy screamed them.
Mr. Robinson had texted his partner about Mr. Kirk after the shooting. “I’ve had enough of his hatred,” he wrote, according to court papers.
Mr. Kirk’s chartered plane traveled back to Scottsdale to ferry his wife to Provo. He was pronounced dead as she was airborne. “I’m looking at the clouds and the mountains,” Ms. Kirk recalled of those surreal hours. “It was such a gorgeous day, and I was thinking: This is exactly what he last saw.”
The sheriff met her in the hospital. He offered her the option of seeing the body but, she said, advised against it. The bullet, he explained, had ravaged Mr. Kirk’s neck.
“With all due respect,” Ms. Kirk remembered saying, “I want to see what they did to my husband.”
She was braced for the worst, but what she saw surprised her. “His eyes were semi-open,” Ms. Kirk said. “And he had this knowing, Mona Lisa-like half-smile. Like he’d died happy. Like Jesus rescued him. The bullet came, he blinked, and he was in heaven.”
She had not been able to kiss him goodbye when he left the house earlier that morning. She did so then.
Jimmy Kimmel’s lie is widely believed, though YouGov finds:
More believe the person who killed Charlie Kirk was mostly motivated by left-wing beliefs than think the shooter was mostly motivated by right-wing ones (37% vs. 17%). 16% think the shooter was motivated by something other than political beliefs and 30% aren't sure
Two-thirds (68%) of Republicans think Kirk's killer was motivated mostly by left-wing beliefs; 4% say it was right-wing beliefs, 11% say something other than politics, and 16% aren't sure
Democrats are more mixed: 10% say the killer was motivated by left-wing beliefs, 33% say right-wing beliefs, 20% say something other than politics, and 37% aren't sure
Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to say they were at least somewhat familiar with Kirk before the week he was killed (72% vs. 41%); only 18% of Republicans say they had never heard of him, compared to 38% of Democrats
Americans are about equally likely to say they have a favorable and an unfavorable view of Kirk (35% vs. 36%); 18% say they have neither a favorable nor an unfavorable opinion of him and 11% say they don't know
The vast majority (83%) of Americans say that the U.S. has grown much more (67%) or somewhat more (16%) politically divided in the past five years; only 4% say the country has become less divided
Most people (83%) also believe that compared to a decade ago, there is more political violence in the U.S.; only 3% say political violence has decreased
78% of Americans — including 75% of Democrats and 89% of Republicans — say that violence is never justified in order to achieve political goals. Adults under 30 are less likely to say it is never justified than are older Americans (63% vs. 82%) and men are less likely than women to say it never justified (72% vs. 84%)
If We Want More Marriage + Sex, Encourage Drinking
I think that’s the direct unintentional conclusion of these three sequential Derek Thompson points:
The anti-social century is the anti-meaning century
Young people are spending less time socializing and less time partying than previous generations. What are they doing instead? Gaming alone, watching TV alone, scrolling on social media alone, and relaxing (often alone). None of that is particularly evil. But by their own testimony, Americans say these activities are significantly less meaningful than caring for children and socializing, both of which we’re doing less of. As a result, young adulthood today seems to be a tradeoff, in which the conveniences of entertainment-rich solitude are winning out over the meaningfulness of time spent with others.
Young people hate alcohol now … and it shows.
One of the more remarkable diet and health shifts of the last few years is the astonishing rise of young adults who say “drinking in moderation” is bad for their health. (I have a lot to say about that.)
Alcohol makes me less neurotic, more agreeable, and more extroverted. So perhaps it’s not totally surprising that young people today are more neurotic, less agreeable, and less extroverted than they used to be. Another Burn-Murdoch banger, of course.
Perhaps relatedly, young people aren’t having nearly as much sex as they used to.
Most notably, the share of young men between 22 and 34 who say they haven’t had sex in the last year doubled between the mid-2010s and 2022.
