Charlie Kirk, America: Who Are We?

I bought a ticket today to travel to the Tribute service of Charlie Kirk. I will be landing in Phoenix on Saturday night and plan to be in line early to enter the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, for the 11:00 AM service on Sunday. His death has hit me hard. I have cried. I have posted passionate words (link to Instagram), and I haven't been able to simply let it go. It dug in deep with me, and I decided I needed to be there. I am not going for political reasons. I am not going for religious or spiritual reasons. I am going because I am trying to understand this country and working to get a grasp on who we are as a nation.

On September 10th, in the afternoon, I caught the update from a friend that Charlie had been shot, and it instantly drove me to scroll the internet and social media. Seeing the wide shot of the tent and hearing the bullet, I pulled in closer to see more and caught the gruesome close-up hit from the sniper’s rifle, watching the body of a man I felt like I knew slump back and to the left as blood gushed out like a geyser from his neck into the air. It was like seeing something out of a scene from a war film, and my instant reaction was to cringe and cry out. That moment was only surpassed when I learned that his wife and children were in the audience with him.

In my time of reflection, I was brought back to Billy Graham, a former minister who had met with presidents and advised them on many levels. The list of those presidents he interacted with reached as deep and as far as Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. I myself grew up respecting evangelist Billy Graham for his influence on the country. His words called people to repent and turn to God. His truth was based on biblical principles. It was bold, cutting, and unforgiving, but no one shot him down during all his public speeches. So what happened between then and now, America?

In my life as a filmmaker, I have traveled this country extensively. Some of those journeys from my youth are shared in my recent book, The Unknown Adventurer. In 2020, I documented the country from coast to coast during COVID in my short film, Empty America. Following up on that film, I documented a ride across the country by bike and worked to capture the spirit of Americans in Crossing Lines: An American Ride. Those experiences have helped tune me to the populace of America and what is often referred to as the backbone of the country. These are Americans who tend to have a strong work ethic, a baseline of common values, and a strong sense of right and wrong. My grandfather was one of them, and to the best of my knowledge, our country’s founders were too.

As the week passed, I continued to think about Charlie as a person. I knew that while he spoke on controversial topics, he was, at his core, a good man. I also knew, from watching his work for years, that the slander so easily spread with overarching words like racist, fascist, transphobic, and the like was inaccurate. It was clear to me that his death was as undeserving as any of the shootings that occur against the innocent in our country. The last few decades have been full of a feverish hunger for meaningless and nonsensical killings by sick people. And each time, I have asked why this is happening and what we can do to resolve it.

For me, I think a big part of that resolution comes down to understanding truth (read my post on truth on Facebook). We have long warped the identity of truth and culturally exchanged the words my perspective for the ownership of my truth. But one individual cannot own truth; truth at its core is distilled down to universal absolutes and shared. We call those common values. Bernie Sanders responded to the killing of Charlie Kirk by saying, “Political violence, in fact, is political cowardice. It means you cannot convince people of the correctness of your ideas, and you have to impose them by force.” That’s the truth, a higher ruling that we all can agree on collectively and hold as a standard across all lines.

The second part of the solution is action. Today, at my doctor’s appointment, a young nurse was taking my vitals and asked me my weight. I accidentally responded with an outlandish number. I told her I weigh 120 pounds. At a glance, you can see I am a 6'1" filled-out 51-year-old male, and to be that thin and look this big would be near impossible to assume. Ironically, she wrote it down until I corrected myself. "That’s ridiculous," I said, "I am not that thin. I am 220. Can you imagine me at 120?"  I watched as she corrected the entry in the medical document and listened as she responded, "I thought that was off, but figured I’d go with it." Quickly, I fired back, "You shouldn't..." It was an anecdotal moment that sums up my point about this generation and our era of 'going with it'. We can no longer just go with it.

I have started to come to terms with the fact that Charlie Kirk is gone. Life goes on. But for me, this has literally become a turning point and there’s no going back. I am going to remain vocal, share my faith, and work to carry on where Charlie left off. In doing so, I filled out and requested a press pass to the event. I am traveling with my camera with the aim of capturing a documentary of the tribute experience and the meaning for people traveling to this historic and monumental event. We aim to capture on-the-street interviews as well as moments with leaders from around the country and globe, sharing their thoughts on the life and mission of Charlie Kirk and how it has changed their perspective. I am setting out on a new course with my work and hope to share the truth with those I connect with.

In closing, a friend of mine reminded me of this Sunday in church. In the Declaration of Independence (1776), Thomas Jefferson wrote the famous line: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." Last week, Charlie lost his life and ultimately his pursuit of happiness, which is fundamental to who we are and what we believe as Americans. The line that was crossed goes against our very foundation and against any idea of any group or person who celebrated or felt justified. It goes without saying, this was un-American, and we can do better.