Where do we go from here?

Making sense of the senseless via the inbox.

Writing fundamentals at their very basic core insist upon constructing a group of paragraphs to support an overall thesis statement.

I’m not so sure this article even has one.

It’s also en vogue to pen a thinkpiece that’s inherently political and overwhelmingly partisan.

This won’t be that, either.

When tragedy strikes, it’s human nature to scramble to try and make sense of it.

Understanding reduces the unknown, thus lessening fear.

However, attempts to understand yesterday’s senseless killing of Charlie Kirk would be an exercise in futility.

It’s something so heinous, so ugly, so primitive that it escapes the bounds of comprehension for any decent person.

Commiseration Loves Company

Any massive burden becomes easier to bear when you have others along with you.

I’ve always prided myself on having a massive social network- one that crosses the bounds of gender, generations, race, creed, and religious beliefs.

Instead of political mudslinging or waxing poetic about a violence-free utopia that we’ll never see, I figured the realest and truest assessment of this dark day would be through the eyes of those that I speak with, and what it says about modern society as a whole.

That is, after all, kind of the point of this Substack.

Let’s try and tackle it together:

Abject Disgust

Naturally, many that I spoke with expressed that they literally felt physically ill upon not only hearing, but seeing the news.

The double-edged sword of our digital world was never more apparent than it was yesterday, as the gruesome imagery of Kirk’s final moments spread across social media like wildfire.

It turns out clean-cut white dudes don’t like seeing another clean-cut white dude get shot and killed on camera.

There was also the issue of mortality.

A large swath of my social group is around Charlie Kirk’s age, give or take 5 years either way.

Some are proud family men.

Charlie Kirk could’ve blended into a fraternity reunion or the dumbbell rack at the gym relatively unnoticed.

He looked just like one of us, and then he was gone.

This was an overdose of visceral emotion for many I spoke with.

Understandable Rage

Frankly, how could you not be?

Almost nobody on this Earth deserves the fate that Charlie Kirk met yesterday.

He wasn’t a violent man, an abuser, a career criminal.

He wasn’t the type of man who leaves a trail of hurt and emotional and physical pain in his wake.

Charlie Kirk actually believed in giving his political adversaries a voice.

The empty chair that joined him on stage was nearly as famous as he was, and in a world that has been polluted by the act of “shouting down” speakers and proliferated by cancel culture, this was a breath of fresh air.

I’m not so naive as to say there aren’t fingers to be pointed and conversations to be had- but I just don’t think it’s the time nor the place at the current moment.

There’s also plenty of writers and creators far better suited than I for that task.

Anyhow, in moments of great injustice, it creates a natural inner turmoil for any healthy man (or woman).

The fire in the heart and the loins screams an eye for an eye, while the brain echoes the famous sentiment that such an approach leaves the world blind.

It’s the sense of grief and despair channeling itself into an internal call to arms.

Many across the country are feeling it today, no doubt.

It’s understandable- and also why you should be careful out there.

Common Sense from the Other Side

This text came from a close friend who is probably completely politically diametrically opposed to Kirk in every single way.

Still, he had the sense to express (with appropriate colorful language) how we all felt about yesterday afternoon’s events.

It was cogent wisdom (avoiding the cesspool that was yesterday’s social media landscape) injected with a healthy dose of “wtf?”

In a country so divided and with a discourse so polluted, this common sense-infused shock and disapproval was a welcome breath of fresh air.

….and now for the Ugly.

This was by far the saddest text I had gotten all day.

It came from a younger friend of mine, a big time fan of Charlie’s.

She posted a RIP photo of Kirk to her Instagram story, a photo that (heartbreakingly) showed him playing with his daughter on a beach.

The result? She lost so many followers immediately after that she was able to notice just from looking at her profile (Instagram doesn’t tell you when somebody unfollows).

Which leads me to the tough part…

The Hearts vs. The Heartless

Many think yesterday was a Left vs. Right issue, Democrat vs. Republican.

I don’t see it that way- and it also wouldn’t be fair to the legion of people who weren’t aligned with Kirk yet acted with grace and class in the aftermath of the shooting.

I think it’s time we face the ugly truth: the true divide in our society is those with hearts versus those without.

The soulful against the soulless.

Much like my friend above, you didn’t have to be a right-winger to lament what happened to Kirk and feel the disgust.

In fact, a different friend I spoke to yesterday was the most rattled of anyone I talked to…and he’s also one of the biggest true blue lefties I’ve ever met in my life.

The size of his heart outweighs his political opinions.

In other words? He’s a good man.

I speak often of people being “silo’d” post-Covid. Perhaps that’s at the root of it.

Our reduced interaction with one another and increasingly digitized world decreases our humanity, and the emotionally lesser of society are all the worse off for it.

For some, a political pundit they disagree with getting gunned down on Live TV hits no different than some gruesome death they watched on Squid Game while scarfing down DoorDash delivered by a human driver they never even interacted with.

It seems as if a lot of us had “leave it at the door” instructions for our empathy and compassion, not just our late-night fast casual delivery slop.

It’s a sobering and vile reality that the digital optics of unfollowing a person for supporting someone they disagree with after they’re brutally murdered outweighs the innate human compassion for a lost son, brother, husband, and father.

It’s maximal digital narcissism meets zero empathy.

As long as the optics are good, who cares what’s in your heart?

Twitter/X and Reddit were abound with the most disgusting takes possible.

Opportunists took to their Instagram stories quicker than Usain runs a 100m to virtue signal about gun control.

It was at best harrowing, it was at its worst the type of thing that leaves you without hope for humanity.

I had hoped we had moved on from half a decade ago when so many people turned on their own friends and family (doing permanent damage in the process), but it seems as if the scales have only shifted into the opposite direction.

You’re probably reading this and echoing the sentiments of my aforementioned enraged friend.

I wouldn’t blame you.

But what to do with that infusion of enraged energy?

Build Like Charlie.

Like him or not, Charlie Kirk was a builder.

He created Turning Point USA into an independent media giant, and was able to make a name for himself in the political commentary landscape.

Even if you hated everything he stood for, there’s a lot to be learned from him.

I would bet almost anything that the ghouls making light of man’s gory untimely death on Reddit or BlueSky have done or created nothing of note.

As I mentioned above, our increasingly digitized culture has spurned a population full of isolated critics.

It’s easier to hate in TikTok comment sections and make awful remarks under an anonymous username than it is to try and fashion something out of yourself in your own life.

Creation and building involves using your gifts, using your gifts generally makes you happy.

I’m never gonna win the mental health Olympics- I also don’t seem to get down on days that I publish my writing.

There’s an obvious correlation there.

Maybe you find yourself veering off into the abyss of hatred (and be warned, for there’s no worse karma than dancing on graves…), it’s not too late to correct the path.

Perhaps you know somebody like this too, and you can do your best to reach out and offer a hand.

It’s a sad reality that some are lost for good. We saw this in 2020/2021.

But I believe (again, perhaps naively) that there’s some builders amongst the rubble of brash hatred.

The Eyebleach Example

My last text excerpt is one I’m finishing this writeup on for a reason.

This came from a longtime friend of mine.

We’re in the same 20-odd person group chat, which had sadly denigrated into finger-pointing and political debate not two seconds after President Trump announced that Kirk had died.

This is another friend with whom my beliefs and leanings are probably pretty different from.

Also, yeah…even if you’re colorblind, you can tell by the emojis at play that we look absolutely nothing alike.

Yes, our paths crossed in this life for a time, but in the grand scheme, there’s a whole lot of difference there, be it culturally, politically, life experiences, etc.

Despite those differences, we were on the same wavelength.

It wasn’t about left or right, or guns, or going after the soulless monsters on Reddit, or being outraged on X.

It was about our fellow man, all other sociopolitical factors be damned.

Humanity over rhetoric.

The hearts won out.

Alright, so how did you handle it then?

Ah, this would be dishonest if I didn’t put myself on blast.

How did our author end the sorrowful, screwed up day in America?

That’s how.

We’ve spoken a bunch about being "Locked In", and I’ve adhered to it. The whole time I’ve done it I’ve allowed myself one “cheat meal” per week.

Usually it’s pizza on Friday.

I decided to expedite this week’s to Wednesday.

That was, until, I realized I was lying to myself with bravado bullshit.

This wasn’t a “cheat meal from my lifting diet bro!1!!!”.

It was an act of self-soothing.

(This dawned on me when I decided that, despite ordering to-go, I sat and ate it in the restaurant by myself)

Comical as it may sound, McDonald’s = America to me.

People from every corner of this country have memories of McDonald’s.

Sitting there in the booth, hearing the weird unique sound of the computers behind the counter, annihilating a Double QPC… it brought me back to simpler times.

Pre-Charlie assassination.

Pre-massive divide.

Pre- anxiety inducing push notifications.

Pre-Covid.

The Good Samaritan era.

For a few quiet minutes, the noise stopped.

Back to the Phone and Back to Life.

Nice as my Golden Arches respite was, the phone was still blowing up and there were conversations to have, fears to assuage, minds to put at ease.

The people in my life were hurting.

Fear, anger, sadness.

It hurt to see and read.

Then I reframed it: in order to feel pain, you must have empathy, you must have compassion.

The people in my life felt pain and despair only because their hearts were in good working order.

It was oddly beautiful, a glimmer of hope and motivation to keep pushing forward on a day that offered so little reason to do so otherwise.

Be safe out there.

🫶🏻

-John Abbate

September 11th, 2025

(no song this time, didn’t feel right.)