sewagefruit

I didn't know Charlie Kirk. I've been in rooms with him but they were big ones and we were never introduced and even if we had been, he wouldn't know little old me from anyone else. But I know a lot of people who did know him and I know a lot of people who could have been in his place.

This is all some horrible game to some of you. Whether you're celebrating right now or calling for retaliation, you're the same. You're playing with the lives of real people because you've forgotten that they're as human as you are.

Charlie Kirk was famous and he said a lot of things people didn't like. Hell, I didn't even like a lot of what he said and I'm not going to do him the disservice of pretending otherwise now. But he wasn't anything special, any better or worse than anyone else. He was really just some guy whose job meant you knew who he was.

A person. Just a normal person, with friends and family and neighbors and colleagues. He didn't stop being a person because you knew his name. He didn't stop being a person because you disagreed with him.

These people whose names you know are real. They're not characters on tv or concepts you disagree with. The collective 'right' and 'left' are both made up of people. Normal decent people who want the same things you do.

Two very little kids are going to grow up now without a dad. Their mother just became a widow and lot of people just lost a friend.

All because you have forgotten the humanity in politics. You've stopped seeing the other side as people.

And don't you dare for one second think I'm just talking to the left now because I am absolutely talking to the right all the same. Those of you saying the left is evil and declaring open season - you're every bit as guilty of this.

Today it wasn't your loved one who died. Today you don't know anyone who lost someone. Be grateful for that. And then shut the fuck up because if you get what you want, tomorrow that might not be true.

You really want to do something about this? Go outside and talk to someone you disagree with. Remind them and yourself that there are human beings on the other side of all this political shit. Give your opposition a human face.