My reference to the famous Donald Rumsfeld quote was carefully chosen. It’s been a full 24 hours since the news broke about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
I deliberately waited a full day because, from past experience in such things (which occur with so much frequency), we know that almost nothing that was “known” in the first few hours will turn out to be true.
We all clung to hopeful signs that the event would end differently. We all saw the video of the older man being carried away by cops as a suspect. We saw the triumphant post from the FBI Director about an arrest, only to see it withdrawn soon thereafter.
Perhaps you too saw posts about a private jet flight out of Provo that vanished and then later reappeared (the jet, that is, not the social media posts).
So, what to make of this headline from the Wall Street Journal,
Ammunition in Kirk Shooting Engraved With Transgender, Antifascist Ideology: Sources.
A vital clue? Misdirection? A suspect is still at large. I don’t recall ever having heard of Utah Valley University before yesterday. Apparently, in terms of students, it’s Utah’s largest university.
There is one other formulation in Rumsfeld’s equation that he did not discuss: unknown knowns.
There are things that we know with absolute certainty, that never seem to enter our conscious minds. Call it gut instinct, intuition, whatever, but we “know” things that cannot always be put into words or given a name or a category.
One previous unknown known was revealed yesterday in Utah. There is something fundamentally off, something basically broken with America that must be fixed or we will not survive.
It’s not “gun control.” It’s not “mental health funding,” whatever that is.
It lies in the hearts and minds of all those schoolteachers, firemen, shop owners, bureaucrats, college students, etc. in my social media feed cheering on the public murder of another human being.
It’s not “both sides,” it’s not “extremists,” it’s a wide swath of everyday people living seemingly everyday lives.
Until yesterday, I was living in the past, a foreign country, where they do things differently.
Now, I am in the present, and quoting Robert Frost, the only way out is through.
