Charlie Kirk, American Politics, and Our Loss of Humanity

A Word on My Political Positions — Along with a Bit of a Rant

"The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism." —Hannah Arendt

I was heading to work today when the gruesome news of Charlie Kirk hit my phone. I was sickened by the video, which confirmed the news of Kirk being shot.

I have disagreed with Kirk for years, but mostly because I disagreed with his justification for violence against the innocent people of Gaza and his support for Israel. And here, we are seeing this same violence in the United States in a very public way. Though we disagree politically, this sort of violence is not the answer. It is not right in Gaza. It is not right here. And I have spent much of my life trying to say this.

And yet… as I was heading off to work to try to make a meager living, one of my close family members decided that *I* was personally to blame for Kirk’s shooting. Here is some edited sections of the text message I received from my own family member earlier today:

“The sick bastards on the left are celebrating tonight, Charlie Kirk is dead. They are for sure already planning on who they will kill next. The TDS bastards are celebrating. It’s a sick goddamned world we are living in. You keep falling deeper and deeper into its clutches. You are brainwashed to the point where there is no return. You better run as fast and far from this Muslim bullshit as you can because you can’t get out. You are screwed… They are evil. They are here to destroy western society and you are there to help them… I will never give in to their bullshit and Sharia law. Stay on their team and you will be a traitor. Nothing more… So stay there with your murdering, raping, brainwashing friends and watch what is happening in Europe as they destroy western civilization. It’s coming here and how you can celebrate that is incomprehensible to me… The shame, pain and disgrace of you becoming a Muslim… Don’t count on praying your way into heaven. If God didn’t answer your prayers as a Christian don’t expect him to answer your prayers with your ass in the air praying to a pedofile [sic] and black rock….”

I was not surprised by this message. I’ve received many similar messages over the years by this person — which is a bit more courteous, in a way, than some of my family who have just stopped talking to me altogether.

What frustrates me the most, however, is how much I have worked to try to bring about better understanding and harmony between conflicting groups — between the Left and the Right, between Christians and Muslims, between Catholics and Orthodox, between Sufis and Salafis, between Sunnis and Shia…. It’s in my nature to try to seek harmonious relationships and a reconciliation of differences. It is all part of a bringing together of all that is fractured in this broken world and bringing it together in the One — in God. Even Jesus said this as his final prayer and wish: That they all may be one. (John 17:21) If anything sums up my whole life mission, it is really that one line: That they all may be one.

Is it no wonder that it was radical tawhid itself which was the largest motivating factor in my coming to Islam? In my growing disillusionment with the increasingly fractured and failing nature of ‘Christendom’?

Not to mention the various messages such as the one above by self-proclaimed ‘Christians’ who seemingly act anything but.

I told the story some time ago about a young man who went to a Greek Orthodox monastic elder on Mount Athos. The young man was eager to know all of the noetic secrets of prayer, theosis, etc. And the elder just looked at the young man and said: “Kid. Just don’t be an asshole and you’ll be in the top ten percent.”

I remember hearing this story as a priest-monk myself in the monastery, and it truly resonated with me as it cut through all of the metaphysics and mysticism and theology and got to the heart of the matter. To simply be the bare minimum of what it means to be a human being doesn’t require deep, esoteric wisdom. Just “don’t be an asshole”. Treat people kindly. Speak with dignity. Do well to others. “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” The basic stuff.

But somehow we haven’t learned that lesson. We shroud our ugliness and our failure as human beings in ideologies, theologies, group identities, etc.

The family member who sent me the message above has never in his life stepped into a church on his own volition. He doesn’t read the Bible. He decries me as ‘siding with terrorists’… yet I was appalled when, during my time as a priest-monk in my monastery, he would send me messages of support for Andrew Breivik — as well as for the New Zealand mosque shootings of 2019 — in that they were somehow done to “preserve Christian civilization” in the creeping face of “violent” Islam.

Never mind that I myself was *actually* living in a monastery day to day. Never mind that I have, for years, spoken out against terrorism and violence against innocent people. Never mind that I have ALWAYS spoken out against the senseless wars waged by the United States that have killed and maimed millions of people with no justification and no end. Never mind that I have written many articles and given countless sermons over the years stating my positions — and stating them articulately. And this included my opposition to Israel and support for Palestinians (both Muslim and Christian), spanning at least the past 25 years.

None of that seems to matter. We’ve been trained to accept a shallow dichotomy: Left or Right, saint or monster. If every conservative is a “Nazi” and every progressive a “Communist,” there’s no room left for thought — only labels and loathing.

The Great Divide

It’s been a long time since the language of the Common Good meant anything in American politics. Perhaps not since the 1960s, when the Left turned away from the working class toward narrow group grievances, while the Right abandoned community for a hyper-individualism draped in the costume of the so-called “Moral Majority.”

Today, we live in an America where the political system thrives not on solving problems, but on exploiting them. Division is not a side effect; it is the system’s fuel. Endless culture wars, outrage cycles, and polarization aren’t signs of dysfunction — they are proof the machine is working exactly as designed.

It is the goal of the American political system not to solve problems nor to work toward the common good. Rather, it is to politically exploit the problems it itself created while stoking constant societal division to serve its own purposes.

The mindless binary thinking of many of the ‘useful idiots’ of the electorate just helps to serve this system. When every conservative is boiled down to being a ‘Nazi’, and any person on the ‘Left’ is called a ‘Communist’, then there is no real thinking or nuance going on. Just hatred and labels.

I will give you my situation, for example. Here is my presidential voting record since my first election in 2000 — and why I never fit the Red/Blue dichotomy:

Some brief explanation is in order. Through much of the 90s, I was a ‘normie’ kid living in suburbia. I entered the 2000 presidential campaign the same way. Then, in the summer of 2000, I met a kid from Rome who introduced me to Noam Chomsky. This opened a whole new world to me. And naturally, with Ralph Nader’s campaign of old-school Leftist politics beyond the binary of establishment Republican/Democrat politics and his anti-corporate stance, I became a campaigner for Nader. And we all know how that ended.

With the introduction of the War in Iraq, I fought endlessly against Bush’s “Axis of Evil” rhetoric and was against the campaign in Iraq — not because I was against war in general, but I thought it was an absolutely bad idea. And I was proved to be correct.

I was not a fan of Kerry, but I voted for him to try to counter Bush and to end the war. But he lost.

By the end of the 2000s, I was still disillusioned with both parties — as well as disillusioned with American liberal establishment. I became more culturally conservative, but still radically against the Establishment in general. In 2008, with the financial crisis, I became enamored with Ron Paul and, like many disillusioned young people at the time, I entered a brief Libertarian phase. I did not really like Obama. He seemed like an empty suit. But it was clear that Ron Paul would not win, and McCain — while he had some qualities I liked, could barely keep his own campaign together. How can he manage the country if he could not manage his own campaign?

So, following the lead of some intellectual Libertarians, I held my breath and voted for Obama. This was the only vote I ever repented of at the time. During Obama’s tenure, we saw the rise of ISIS, of racial tensions, of increased regime change and military action globally.

By 2012, I was in the monastery, and I did not vote. Even so, I paid attention to the election, and I saw Romney as an empty suit just like the rest of them.

I basically gave up on American electoral politics at that point.

By the election of 2016, I saw American ‘conservatism’ as moribund. It didn’t ‘conserve’ anything. Meanwhile, Democrats like Obama and Hillary Clinton only pushed for more wars and for increasing hostilities against Russia — which only meant more ‘forever wars’.

All my life, I hated Donald Trump. And yet, in 2016, he was the only person who stood on stage and denounced the Bushes for their lies regarding the war in Iraq and the endless wars that we engaged in overseas. Here was a candidate — on a Republican platform — who finally seemed to speak for the working class (which the Democrats had long abandoned) and who denounced the War in Iraq as a conflict that cost millions of lives and maimed so many American soldiers that was based on a lie.

As a Russian Orthodox priest-monk, I witnessed Hilary Clinton drumming up war with Russia, as well as cheering regime change across the Middle East. So, I received a special blessing to vote against her — in a vote for Donald Trump.

Donald Trump, at the time, was the anti-Establishment candidate. Was I on board with all of Trump’s positions? No. But he was a sort of hammer against the Neocon establishment in Washington. And an effective one at that… at the time.

The election year of 2020 really deserves its own article. The so-called “Summer of Love” protests in 2020 lacked any shared end state; they widened the chaos and the class fracture already ripping through American life. But I felt that much of what happened in 2020 was orchestrated to unseat Trump. And I still feel that way. The so-called “Summer of Love” protests in 2020 had no real goal or end to be worked toward, but simply spread chaos and division within American society. There was a reason that the working class identified with Trump. For better or worse, he spoke their language. He was against the brow-beating of American liberals who spoke down to average Americans as racist, sexist, white supremacists, Nazis, “deplorables”, idiots, etc.

The Biden administration carried on with this position — but with an added element. The Biden administration was adamant in supporting Israel in their genocide of the Palestinian people. And Harris vowed to carry on this position. Meanwhile, nearly the entire Biden administration spent all of its energy to try to unseat Trump — and they failed. All the while the economy plunged and the cost of living became unbearable. Average Americans could barely afford housing and groceries, all the while fentanyl, homelessness and crime ravaged American cities — all while we were giving hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to Israel to carry out one of the most brutal slaughters of a civilian population in modern history.

And so, in 2024, I voted for Trump a third time. At this point, there were even many Muslims who supported Trump as a possible hope the the end of the slaughter in Palestine and the regaining of “America First” amid endless war and social problems. (I talk about this in my article “The Treachery of Donald Trump”.)

But now, Trump 2 is far worse than I could have imagined.

Why do I bring all of this up? I mention all of this because I always tried to look at the American political situation in a nuanced way. It wasn’t a simple black-and-white Democrat vs. Republican or Liberal vs. Conservative framework that I viewed things. We seem stuck in this “Red Team vs. Blue Team” nightmare in which all nuance is swept away in the name of a zero-sum “team politics”. When I supported Trump in 2020, my ‘conservative’ family hailed me as a wise voice in these matters of politics. But now that that the pendulum has swung the other way, I’m being denounced as a “far-leftist”, a “terrorist-supporter” (once again, as in 2003), and an enemy.

In this ridiculous binary of American politics, all nuance is lost, and any real analysis of our current situation is pigeonholed into two black-and-white positions. And I think my record has spoken well outside of this sort of divisive binary.

During Trump’s first term — and during Biden’s time in office — speaking out for the American people and against foreign engagement was hailed by my more ‘conservative’ compatriots and family. Now… the same language is seen as treason.

I have never changed my position. But the situation around me has shifted. And the American media has been working around the clock in order to condition us into these false binaries that do nothing other than serve the divide-and-conquer agenda of the Establishment.

Every once in a while, you see something that awakens the latent class consciousness of the American people who are simply tired. You saw this in the case of Luigi Mangione. And you saw this in the Christopher Dorner shootings of 2013. It is not that I condone such acts of violence. But both cases had a sort of Robin Hood quality that spilled out over the ‘acceptable’ and heavily curated narratives of mainstream media and captured the imaginations of Americans who have just had enough of being the victims of corruption and oppression. I’m saying that moments like the Luigi Mangione case — and yes, even the polarizing Dorner episode — briefly exposed a suppressed class rage that our curated media narratives cannot hold. That’s a warning signal, not a model. And I think things like this are not at all unnoticed by the Powers that Be.

This is, really, the genesis of the American system of government. This is the language of the American Declaration of Independence, which is kept in a bullet-proof glass casing in the archives of Washington, DC:

“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. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Was the American Revolution a signing of petitions? A march in the streets with paper banners? A singing of folk songs? I’ll let you answer that.

This is not “Leftist Radicalism” or “Islamic Terrorism”. This is the very basis of our existence of a nation.

But we have lost our idea of a nation sharing collective values. And we are left, instead, in the position that we are in now.

I also bring this up because I was charged by my own family member for being some sort of “Islamic Terrorist/Liberal radical” for the same positions we shared in common back in 2020 when I spoke out against the division in our country which seemed, to me, orchestrated simply to cause division — and not to mention an encroaching authoritarianism that demanded “vaccine passports” and liberal ideological purity.

‘Traditional Anti-Liberal Left’: My Political Position Explained

I have been called many things over the years: a “liberal radical,” a “reactionary,” a “naïve idealist,” a “terrorist sympathizer.” But if I am to put my cards on the table and explain where I truly stand, it is this: I am a traditionalist anti-liberal Leftist.

What does that mean?

First, it means that I refuse to play the American game of team politics. I will not be reduced to wearing either the red jersey or the blue one. Both parties, both camps, both “teams” are actors in the same production. The script is written for them by the Establishment, and their job is to keep the audience divided and shouting at each other, rather than noticing the strings being pulled above the stage. As George Orwell once observed: “The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.” In our case, the divide is between those who cling to the Establishment’s binaries and those who see through them.

Second, it means I reject liberalism — not just the Democratic Party or “woke” rhetoric, but liberalism itself as the guiding philosophy of American life. This is true for American “conservatives” and “liberals”, who are really both sides of the same individualist coin.

Liberalism, in its essence, is not about freedom. It is about commodification. It turns every human relationship into a transaction. It turns rights into bargaining chips. It turns people into consumers, and freedom into the shallow “choice” between products. Simone Weil, writing in the ashes of Europe’s collapse, put it well: “To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.” Liberalism uproots. It severs us from God, from community, from meaning — leaving us free only in the emptiest sense. Do we buy Starbucks or Black Rifle Coffee? Do we shop at Target or Walmart? Do we drink Bud Light or… something else.

But unlike many who reject liberalism, I do not fall back into reactionary politics, nor into the myth of some glorious authoritarian order. My rejection of liberalism is grounded in tradition, in the conviction that true human flourishing comes when we are rooted — rooted in faith, in community, in meaning that transcends the market and the state. Without tradition, politics becomes a hollow exercise in power management. Without transcendence, justice collapses into slogans. As Ali Shariati wrote: “Religion is a protest against a world where man is reduced to a thing.”

And so the third piece: I am of the Left, because I believe exploitation is evil and must be opposed. I believe the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized — whether in Gaza, in Appalachia, or in the homeless encampments of American cities — are not pawns to be used but human beings whose dignity demands justice. I believe capitalism is not freedom but theft, and I will not sanctify it under the guise of “free markets.” Thomas Sankara, martyred for such convictions, said: “We must choose either champagne for a few or safe drinking water for all.” That choice still confronts us today.

When you bring these three together — tradition, anti-liberalism, and Leftism — you arrive at a position that is not easily boxed into Left or Right. It is a politics that honors the sacred and the communal while demanding economic justice and solidarity. It is closer to Simone Weil than to the Democratic Party; closer to Ali Shariati than to the Republican Right. It is a politics that refuses to accept that our only choices are neoliberal identity-management on one hand, or nationalist capitalism on the other.

This is not nostalgia for the past, nor utopian dreaming of the future. It is an insistence that there can be no justice without meaning, no freedom without rootedness, no solidarity without transcendence.

I call this traditionalist anti-liberal Leftism because it cuts against the grain of the age. It offends liberals who want progress without God, and it unsettles conservatives who want God without justice. But it is, I believe, the only position that can break the cycle of exploitation and division that defines American politics today.

In the end, my position is simple, though it has taken me a lifetime to name it: I stand for the sacred, for community, and for justice. And I stand against any system — whether neoliberal, neoconservative, or authoritarian — that seeks to rob us of our humanity. As the old Zapatista slogan puts it: “For everyone, everything. For us, nothing.”

It is a position that stand for what is right — regardless of the ideology, group identity or false theological underpinnings.

This is where Charlie Kirk comes back into the picture.

Condemning the shooting of Charlie Kirk does not dilute my condemnation of children shot queuing for water; moral clarity is not a zero-sum game.

We are all rightly horrified at the image of Kirk being shot and blood gushing from his neck. But where was the sympathy for thousands of children every single day who were snippered in Gaza while just looking for water? For seeking aid? Displaced by their homes and orphaned from their families?

This is something that Charlie Kirk said:

Is this what ‘conservatism’ has come to?

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t condone in an instant what happened to Charlie Kirk. This sort of wanton violence is evil, and again, it is what I have dedicated my life against. Yet American ‘Christians’ who sit back and watch a slaughter of communities, the snipering of children (attested to by video, doctors, aid workers), and the random killing of people just trying to get water and food are just as complacent in this evil.

This is not only not Christian, but it is anti-human. Anybody who sings praises to God while this is happening has traided in their humanity for that of feral beasts. It is simply demonic.

And I am on record saying the same about Muslims who cheer the deaths of innocents in the name of their own sectarian pride.

Beyond Red and Blue: A Plea for Common Humanity after the Shooting of Charlie Kirk

If there is any thread running through this whole piece — from a family text message dripping with contempt, to the spectacle of a public figure bleeding on camera, to children shot while queuing for water — it is this: we have bartered away our humanity. We have done so for team politics, hash tags and a loss of our soul as human beings. We have learned to feel only when the victim belongs to our tribe, and to sneer when the dead are counted on the other side.

I refuse that bargain.

The older I get, the more I believe politics is downstream of spiritual character. A nation of people who will not guard their own tongues and hearts cannot be trusted with power. “Don’t be an asshole” was the monk’s crude wisdom; it was also the beginning of a civilization. Manners become morals; morals become laws; laws become a people’s fate. If we train ourselves to mock the suffering of our enemies, we should not be surprised when cruelty returns home like a boomerang.

My position has not changed: I will stand against the shooting of Charlie Kirk and against the snipering of a thirsty child in Gaza. I will oppose the bombing campaign and the revenge stabbing; the bulldozer and the car bomb; the smart missile and the dumb riot. I will not twist my soul into a pretzel to justify one and condemn the other. Either human life is sacred or God is a liar.

The Qur’an says: “Whoever kills a soul — unless for a just cause — it is as if he has slain all humankind; and whoever saves a life, it is as if he has saved all humankind.” (Qur’an 5:32)
And it says again: “O humankind, We created you from a male and a female and made you peoples and tribes so that you may know one another. Truly, the most noble of you in the sight of God is the most God-conscious.” (Qur’an 49:13)

These are not abstractions. They are demands from our One God — the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The God that said “thou shalt not kill” as a basis of all of our laws and interactions.

If we believe this truth, then our grief cannot be selective and our outrage cannot be rented by the hour. The test is simple:

• When “our side” commits an evil, do we say so — plainly, immediately, without euphemism?
• When the suffering is politically inconvenient, do we lift it into speech anyway?
• When the mob demands a blood sacrifice, do we choose to bless the peacemakers and starve the spectacle?

A politics worthy of human beings will be built on that kind of interior courage. Call it what you like — conscience, taqwā, integrity — but without it the republic is just an arena, and we are gladiators performing for algorithms.

So here is my small vow, publicly made: I will not cheer for death. I will not sanctify theft. I will not outsource my empathy to party operatives or influencers. I will judge policies by the faces they wound and the homes they leave in rubble. I will side with the living, even when it costs me friends, family, followers, or the false comfort of belonging.

Let the last word be a blessing rather than a curse: May we become a people who “know one another” instead of hunting one another; a people who save lives more often than we explain them away; a people who remember that the image of God is not a partisan watermark but a mystery stamped on every face.

If we cannot be that people, then all our arguments are just noise around a sad and eternal grave. If we can, even a little, then perhaps there is still time to recover the common good — and, with it, our common humanity.

There’s a lot more I planned to say in this article, but that’s all I have to say about this right now.

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Thank you, and may God reward you! Glory to God for all things!