What i saw at charlie kirk’s Memorial
As I closed in on the entrance gate, the first thing I noticed was a Princess Diana amount of flowers flanking the 12’ gap in the chain link fence that secured the perimeter. As the shrine came into focus I realized that what appeared to be a hero’s amount of flowers was actually graveyard of half-drinken water bottles, scattered in compliance with the event’s “no liquid policy”. I love a little drama and was delighted to have arrived just in time to hear a man vault loudly “Hey! Come on man! Let me in!” In a dishonorable discharge kind of way.
The man at the gate gave me a look that said “whatever you’re about to say, don’t”. I countered with look that said “I spend my free time trying to find managers to speak with.” “Yes?” Sounds like a challenge. “I’m with the press”, I cheerfully but not too cheerfully announced, pocket bulging with old press passes from events like SXSW and the Kentucky Derby hoping neither he nor the 650 secret service agents would notice.
I made it through the gate when I passed the first of many cadres of secret service agents, keeping my head down and pretending I was on the phone. A chubby Turning Point volunteer stepped in my path, aroused that he was about to have a speaking part. He looked serious on the outside but cheerful on the inside. “Ma’am? Do you know where you’re going?” I have never in my life known where I’m going and I certainly didn’t now. “I’m with the press.” Deciding I wasn’t worth the effort he said “Gate 3” in a way that he was happy for me to become someone else’s problem and I was happy to oblige.
Outside of the security checkpoint was a thrift store banquet table handsomely covered by black fabric that looked like an afterthought. I was about to encounter a series of questions that I had in no way to prepare for. On a quick sweep, I picked the weak looking young man on the end who doesn’t look old enough to know how to say no.
“I’m with the press.” I again muttered, fully prepared to whip out my bullshit of tangled passes. “What’s your name?” “Lindsey Whiddon” I expressed with a confidence that quickly faded as he flicked down the list on his iPad. “I don’t see…” “Are you sure?” He was sure and we both knew it. “Who are you with?”
My brain sprung like a bingo ball machine of adjectives and nouns trying to find a combo that would most efficiently jerk him off “The Christian…” off to a strong start. “…Press.” Not registering. “…I mean Post?” “Who’s your contact?” I had been researching the event like a meth addict the night before so I would not need to phone a friend for this one. “Tyler with Turning Point?” His eyes widened. I was on the right track.”Tyler Tyler?” “I usually just say it once but yeah.” Tyler, was the new first in command at TP and had just earned himself a Christmas bonus.
As I approached the first security gauntlet, a memory of me being turned away from a Dodger’s game for having a vape in my pocket flashed in my mind so I shoved it down the front of my pants in an effort to ruin my family name. I encountered an hourly employee who looked like he was serious on the outside and hated his dad on the inside so I grabbed my effects, and tied my sweatshirt around the front of my jeans like I’d just shit my pants with lethal force. My tiny but obtrusive bulge threatened to give me away. Hoping they’d preserve what little dignity I had left, I managed to escape an interrogations about my pronouns at a Turning Point event.
My first encounter was with a Secret Service member I only identified because the words were embroidered on his tan tactical vest—front and back. I would not realize until I ChatGPTed it later that there were 750 members of the Secret Service on site which feels like too many but nobody asked me.
“Would you mind if I took a photo of you?” I asked the man who, by nature of his job, probably minds a lot of things.
“No.”
My next stop was the hot dog stand because we were, after all, in a stadium, and I’m a when in Rome kinda gal. As I clutched my tiny totem of what American means to me in two words, I proudly looped my boosted pass across a neck when I glanced at it for the first time.
I can’t believe my luck when I read the word FLOOR at the bottom which, for this group, I can liken to pit tickets at a Taylor Swift concert. I glide down the stadium stairs as if they belong to my own personal Tara begging people to turn and furtively whisper to each other. I am clearly some kind of mistake but even a blind squirrel finds an occasional nut.
My world shrinks to the size of a viewfinder dulling my remaining four senses. I am wholly ignorant of what is being said and at times shouted behind me by a convoy of cabinet members and religious leaders — stump speeches disguised as tributes and sermons that mangle the love of Christ in a way would leave him heartbroken.
Four hours in, the headliner took center stage. Applause shattered the silence of 100,000 faces as the Commander in Chief returned a gaze that said he would be jerking himself off to this later tonight. I begged myself to stay. “This may be the only time in my life I’ll hear an speech by a sitting president delivered in person. My parents are Republicans so it was the least I could do to thank them for not having an abortion.
I stuck around for the first fifteen of the forty four minutes and forty three seconds of his speech before I couldn’t take it anymore. I was hungry, I was tired, and 4+ hours of sitting in a fellowship hall folding chair had done me in. I dragged my sore body up an interminable amount of steps, parting a Red Sea of faces swollen with triglycerides. My departure was anathema and we all knew it. I gave them a look that said “Gotta beat the traffic” as the dads gave me a knowing nod.
I made a decision long ago to leave judgment at the door when entering others’ sacred space and replace it with curiosity. I have always considered the opportunity to be a stranger in a strange land to be a privilege and find that allowing my opinions to color my experience leaves me with the lack of humanity necessary to capture the world as it is. I spent most of the day with my back to the drone of cabinet members, focused on the crowd. On these people whose lives, regardless of my opinion, had been affected in a tremendous and terrifying way.
I found myself surprised by the burn of my eyes during his widow’s speech, wondering how she could muster the bravery to face 100,000 people and millions more across the world. In that moment, what I saw was a wife who had lost a beloved partner. A mother of two children that would grow up calling another man “Dad.” I thought of the shockwaves that this would create around the country…my country…and braced myself for a national fallout unlike anything the world has ever seen. Red and blue, two vicious peas in the same pod with not a stripe of white between them.
I thought of Tyler James Robinson, the 22 year old boy who is a man in headlines because he’s over 18. I thought not only of the lives that had been shattered by violence but the lives yet to be shattered as we trade flowers for pitchforks. I thought of what a fucking tragedy it all is. A tragedy to be killed, a tragedy to be left behind, and tragedy to be a young man staring down the long hallway of his life, haunted by the ghosts of those who would not attend his wedding and whose freshly dug graves he would not cry into.
I didn’t do it perfectly but I did choose to try not to let my own bias to color my world that day. I traded smugness for a respectful black because there is so much to mourn and I get to decide what’s worth weeping over. Nobody asked but if they had, I’d have told them that I wore black for my country and the millions of people in it. I wore black to pay respects to the yawning distance between E Pluribus Unum and where we are now. I wore black for the hearts breaking from the grave who had once decided etch it on our currency, certain that it would never go out of style. “Out of many, one.”
Death is what brought us together that day but there is a much more violent death to follow. The death of discourse, the death of personal responsibility, and the depth charge that will further incite us to cannibalize each other, this time with megaphones.
I mourned many things that day but most of all I mourned for myself. I mourned for my Republican family and Democratic friends. I am both proud to be American and ashamed to be identified as one. I was born in this country and I will die in this country.
I mourn because this is my home and I have no place else to go.
