The Fate of the Bully Pulpit

Illustration by Mia Navarro and Connor JL Moore

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“Suddenly, in the very middle of saying something, I felt – it is very hard to describe what I felt, though I remember it with the utmost vividness. Roughly speaking, it was the sensation of being at the centre of an explosion. There seemed to be a loud bang and a blinding flash of light all around me, and I felt a tremendous shock - no pain, only a violent shock, such as you get from an electric terminal.”

- George Orwell, recalling what it felt like to get shot in the throat in Homage to Catalonia, 1938

George Orwell and Charlie Kirk were roughly the same age when they were shot in the throat. Both men made a healthy living at the center of national rhetoric. They impishly threw wry little hand grenades over the garden fence to the other side of the political divide. While I didn’t much care for any of Kirk’s political positions, he was a vibrant man, obviously taking a great deal of joy in promoting his ideology in the most brash way possible. 

In Spain, Orwell fought for a communist militia against the fascist, General Franco. His book, Homage to Catalonia, is an account of a nation torn asunder from one ideologically committed outside observer. Kirk, conversely, was a committed ideologue and nationalist in a country that seems just as polarized as Civil War era Spain. Both possessing two juxtaposed political poles, growing wider apart. If the killing of Kirk and sequential administrative reaction demonstrate anything, it's that we have lost our shared sense of the nation and what it means to be American.

In a healthy society, we should be able to tolerate people we disagree with. Even if you don’t like them or their position, you’re supposed to throw your hands in the air and give thanks that the figure you agree with can say what they will. Hell… had Kirk been given enough time to grow, he may well have written a book with an impact as significant as Animal Farm or 1984. We should be grateful Orwell survived his injury and would go on to live another twenty years to write his magnum opus. But alas, we live in a world where people can get shot just for what they believe: Orwell in 1930s Spain, Kirk in contemporary America. 

Whether you agree with Kirk or Orwell, right or left. We can all agree that we took a wrong turn somewhere. We are off the damn rails. Being this mad at one another—digging in rhetorically and literally, “wrecking” others’ arguments, and now, pointing rifles at one another—cannot lead us anywhere better. I would emphasize to both Kirk and Orwell-aligned readers that you have bared your teeth in the wrong direction. This violent disagreement benefits no one except the politicians who brought us here. We’ve entered the Thunderdome of politics. On the left, you have some ugly, useless donkey; on the right, an intolerably mean elephant. Only one of them is leaving this alive, both of which I disdain… and you probably do too. 

We’ve entered the Thunderdome of politics. On the left, you have some ugly, useless donkey; on the right, an intolerably mean elephant. Only one of them is leaving this alive, both of which I disdain… and you probably do too.

One thing is without question in all this. Orwell describes his thoughts immediately after realizing he’d been hit: “My first thought, conventionally enough, was for my wife. My second was a violent resentment at having to leave this world which, when all is said and done, suits me so well.” I cannot imagine Kirk thought of anything other than leaving his wife, children, and so much of his work unfinished in those final moments. While I didn’t much like him, no one can deny that this world suited him quite well. 

God bless America. We certainly need it.

Braxton Fuller is a current master’s candidate for International Security at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs.

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