Assassination in the Age of Algorithms

An interesting conversation with my son yesterday. For first-time readers, his name is Luca – 14 years old. Football player, baseball player, and political pundit of our home. A young man with emerging thoughts and beliefs. My endeavor to teach him how to walk on the edge of a razor blade in between opposing points of view works sometimes…but not others.

Today’s Moms and Dads are powerless against TikTok – and because of this my son and teens across the country came to know Charlie Kirk much better than most of us adults. Then, they watched Charlie get assassinated – in slow motion…every single frame.

Over and over again.

Just a pic of kids watching a real life murder before school - no big deal

To the best of my knowledge, being killed in a public political assassination in broad daylight on live television is an end that few have suffered in our country. MLK, JFK, and RFK come to mind. I know in some countries executions take place in public and on television. That’s gruesome. American kids aren’t subjected to that. For the Moms and Dads out there struggling with the fact that our kids are watching people get real – not Hollywood – killed…you aren’t alone. Since the moment it happened, the C. Kirk killing has been on my son’s mind. It’s in his algorithm – which is a thing I really can’t change.

Yesterday:

Luca:  

Dad, Charlie Kirk’s killer is gonna get the firing squad.

Me:      

Then what happens?

Luca:  

Then he’s dead and it’s over.

Me:      

What’s over?

Luca:  

That’s what you get when you shoot someone. You get shot.

Me:      

So that’s it? Once the guy who shot him gets shot we don’t talk about it anymore?

Luca:  

He deserves to get shot Dad. He killed a dad in front of his 3-year-old kid.

Me:      

So, if he waited to kill him when the kid wasn’t there, that’s different? A kid I wrestled with got shot. The guy who killed him gets out of prison this year.

Luca:  

Kareem wasn’t Charlie Kirk Dad.

Me:      

So if you kill a man on a street in Niagara Falls, you go to jail for 17 years. If you kill a man on a campus in Utah, you get the firing squad? That’s odd.                                                        

Luca:  

Kareem wasn’t friends with the President.

Me:      

So the moral of the story is not to kill friends of the President? Street violence gets jail. Political violence is executed. Got it.                       

Luca:  

Dad, the guy who shot Charlie Kirk is crazy. It’s different.

I hate the topics, but I love these convos with him.

It’s my nature with him. I don’t give him my opinions. I give him questions. I’m less concerned with the side he picks – more concerned with him being able to see all the sides. He doesn’t have to be the monkey in the middle like me – but the way I see it, being able to see, empathize, understand, and articulate both sides of a proverbial coin is a survival skill.

Kirk’s views got him assassinated. His killer’s views get him executed.

Friendships lost. Families divided. Crips can’t be Bloods. Muslims and Jews. Black vs. White. Roe vs. Wade. Ukraine and Russia. Fox vs. CNN. The pattern is the same.

And the only guaranteed winners? Those who own stock in META – the ticker symbol for the company that runs Facebook and Instagram. All the fighting drives their stock price higher. They’ve gone up 27% in the past six months.

Facts.

So I asked Luca: what do you have in common with Charlie Kirk? Even with the guy who shot him? When my mother gets on the topic, I remind her that she has more in common with the people she argues with than she does with Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, or JD Vance – the ones who stir it all up. Kamala wears Cartier watches – she’s been seen wearing two different ones. Trump’s watches are worth more than most people’s houses. That’s not us.

For my son, the focal point isn’t why someone with blue hair at his school is different. The real question is: how are the two of you the same? And maybe that’s where this is at – the big META stockholders have one thing in common – they’re all rich.

And here’s the piece that drives me: it’s the things we hold in common that are most powerful. When I look at kids who struggle – whether because of poverty, disability, trauma, or just the daily grind of growing up in a world that feels too fast and too cruel – I don’t see them as problems to solve. I see them as reflections of me, of Luca, of all of us. Every student has a story. Every family carries burdens. Every tired, beleaguered staff member is doing the best they can with the tools they’ve got. That’s what connects us. And that’s why my life’s work has been to fight for them, not because they are “different,” but because in their struggles I recognize my own.

This is what I want Luca to see and feel. Not that people always gotta agree, but that every disagreement is rooted in a shared humanity. When he learns to look first for what he has in common with someone else – even someone whose views make his head spin – he’s building a bridge instead of a wall. He’s learning that love and understanding are angles of approach, not ideals. They are survival strategies in a fractured world.

So I tell him: don’t just see Charlie Kirk the debater, or the shooter the criminal. See them as men, as sons, as fathers, as people who, just like you, were shaped by parents, friends, neighborhoods, and choices. When you start there, you’re not blinded by division or consumed by hate. You’re opening yourself up to the radical act of connection.

And if that’s leadership, so be it. If that makes me a better father, then that’s the legacy I want Luca to inherit. Because when he learns to see others in terms of what unites them, he also learns how to advocate…for the kid who’s struggling to read, for the family who can’t make rent, for the teacher whose energy is spent. And in that space, where empathy meets action, love is supposed to win.