We’ve just been through another moment: Charlie Kirk dead, an American provocateur murdered during a public event.
Immediately, the gears of outrage, social media spectacle, and moral posturing started turning. But underneath the noise, ask yourself: how much of what’s going on is politics as usual? And how much is a vivid distraction from what really holds power in this country?
“If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.” — The Charlie Kirk Show, January 23, 2024 The Guardian
The Spectacle & Response
If you scroll through social media or listen to pundits, a few things become crystal:
- Charlie Kirk has been more than “just another right-wing podcaster”; for many on the Right, he is being elevated to martyr, symbol, hero. This is intentional. It fuels identity, animus, and grievance.
- Meanwhile, the Left is also practicing its version of virtue displays: denunciations, calls for “free speech,” arguments over who is more morally responsible. Sometimes these are sincere; often they are performative.
Then there’s the machinery of suppression/support. Jimmy Kimmel gets pulled off the air indefinitely for his remarks about the killing. Platforms scramble. Lawmakers issue statements. Some people are fired, suspended, disowned for social media posts judged too flippant, too critical, too celebratory (or even just insufficiently mournful).
“You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won’t have a single gun death. That is nonsense. It’s drivel. But I am — I think it’s worth it.” — Charlie Kirk
Lost in the Frenzy: What Actually Matters
While we lock into tribal alignment over “Is X more to blame?” or “Did Y censor free speech?”, real decisions continue to be made elsewhere—decisions that hurt or help ordinary lives.
- Income inequality: Since 1980, the bottom 90% of U.S. earners have seen incomes rise ~36%, while the top 1% shot up ~162% and the top 0.1% exploded by ~301%.
- Wage stagnation: Median weekly earnings for full-time workers in mid-2025 are ~$1,196. For women, it’s ~$1,078. Adjusted for inflation, most wages haven’t moved much in decades.
- Medical debt: 40% of adults report bills they can’t pay. Roughly 20 million Americans owe medical debt, totaling at least $220 billion.
- Bankruptcies: 2024 saw over 517,000 filings, up 14% from the year before. Medical bills remain a top driver.
- Life expectancy: Americans in the wealthiest counties live about 7–10 years longer than those in the poorest. Poverty literally shortens life.
These are not abstractions. They are the ground we stand on, and they’re being ignored while we fight over who disrespected whose memory.
“Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.” — The Charlie Kirk Show, May 19, 2023 The Guardian
The Trap of Left vs Right
This is the pattern: tragedy or provocation → political polarization → spectacle → distraction. And the Left vs Right framing helps elites on both sides:
- Right-wing media gets a martyr, a rallying cry, an excuse to push further culture war rhetoric.
- Left-wing media and centrist commentators get to critique, outraged, safe inside their media bubbles, while pointing fingers.
- Neither side is forced to substantially challenge the power structures: the economic inequality, corporate control of media, tech platform power, the role of political money.
““Keep America free … You should be allowed to say outrageous things … There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And all of it’s protected by the First Amendment.” — earlier in 2025, in remarks pushing back against limits on free speech. The Santa Barbara Independent
Class War, Not Culture War
Here’s what we lose when class war is displaced:
- People who could be allies don’t realize their shared stakes. Someone working a low-wage job and voting for the Right may still suffer under the same rent inflation, the same healthcare inaccessibility as someone voting for the Left. But because symbols and culture dominate, they are told to hate each other instead.
- Policies that could improve life—universal health care, affordable housing, stronger unions, more equitable taxation, campaign finance reform—are sidelined as too “political” or unsexy amid culture war spectacle.
- Elites (corporations, wealthy donors, political insiders, media conglomerates) are mostly unaffected by the noise. Their power increases because scandal, outrage, fear allow for more regulation of dissent (or selective enforcement), more control over narrative, and more justification for reinforcing the “security” apparatus.
“America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that.” — The Charlie Kirk Show, August 22, 2025 The Guardian
What We Should Be Looking Up At
If we want to shift the ground, here’s what it means to look up not sideways:
- Hold powerful institutions accountable: Big tech, media conglomerates, regulatory agencies, secret lobbying networks.
- Shift public focus to material conditions: how many people cannot afford medical care; how many are one paycheck from eviction; how wealth is concentrated.
- Build movements oriented around economic justice, not just identity or ideology. Worker organizing, co-ops, mutual aid, housing justice.
- Demolish or weaken the structures that enforce class inequality: tax loopholes, corporate welfare, deregulated finance, and campaign finance that amplifies elite voices.
“If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us … You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.” — The Charlie Kirk Show, July 13, 2023 The Guardian
Defend free speech. Don’t confuse theater with truth. Don’t let the spectacle steal the stage from power.
Culture war is a powerful machine. It divides communities, drains energy into rage, and channels anger toward the wrong targets—often toward each other. Meanwhile, the people who really control the levers of economic power, of media control, of policy-making, carry on largely unchallenged.
The class war may not feel dramatic; it may feel slower, like moving tectonic plates. But its consequences are far deeper and more pervasive than the latest outrage.
And if we don’t shift our attention, the cycle will keep repeating: event → sides drawn up → outraged tweets and show cancellations → temporary appeasement → next event. Without meaningful structural change, nothing really gets better for most people.
Anarchy Journal Constitutional 