Really? Flags at half-staff to honor Charlie Kirk? This is the young man who openly and passionately supported Donald Trump and his movement to destroy American democracy, and who gained wealth and power while doing so. 

This is the young man who has advocated so strongly for supporting a president who ultimately will be responsible for thousands upon thousands of deaths in our lifetime, both in our country and around the world — deaths from hunger, sickness and war, deaths from cuts to Medicaid and public assistance programs, and the virtual elimination of foreign assistance literally grabbed food and medicine from the mouths of babies.

He also cut scientific and medical research so that Americans and people around the world will not have access to therapies that might have saved them, not to mention deaths from the hurricanes and droughts and wildfires spawned by the climate destruction overtaking our planet and deaths from the refusal to enact sane gun laws that perhaps might have helped saved Kirk’s life.  And that is only the beginning.  

I do not celebrate Kirk’s death or the violence that produced it. I grieve for his family, especially his young children who should not have had to lose their father. But to lower flags in honor of someone who supported the worst impulses of the authoritarians seeking to subvert our nation?   Really? What a sad state we have come to now.

William Klingelhofer
Bristol