In the aftermath of the highly-anticipated meeting between the outspoken political commentator Candace Owens and Erika Kirk, the widow of the late Charlie Kirk, many find themselves trying to decide (or having already decided) where they stand on the issues. After all, in the age of social media and artificial intelligence, people are, more than ever, inclined to express themselves publicly, to pick a side, or to hasten to adopt a set of beliefs concocted for them — all generally in order to avoid appearing uninformed or stupid. In the course of doing this, however, many seem to accomplish just that — revealing just how uninformed and foolish they are.
There is also another method which allows individuals to insert themselves into the conversation purely for the sake of letting others know just how little they care. These are the types who won’t be troubled to form an opinion (short of ‘not caring’) or to risk sounding foolish (which they manage to do anyway); on the contrary, they are the ones who (as they see it) assume the high ground and have reached such a peak of intellect as to be indifferent and unaffected, and to (from their perches) scoff at others whom they belittle for daring to care about the events transpiring in their time — events shaping the future to be inherited by their heirs. They claim, “I don’t care”, “I’m over it”, “Who cares?”, “You’re still talking about this?”, “Move on already”.
In all of this chatter, the intellectual giants of indifference miss the point: ‘Not caring’ isn’t a virtue, and it’s neither new nor unique. Granted, social media has certainly played a role in aiding in its becoming ever more fashionable in the comments sections across the web, and indeed the claimed indifference among many commenters (on matters of all sorts) hasn’t been without good cause, considering the nonstop noise and the bulk of untrustworthy reports coming from so many unknowable sources with unknown motives, closely-guarded secrets, and conflicts of interest.
The truth is that, so far as anybody cares about what happened to Charlie Kirk — and they should care — it is worth getting to the truth and getting real justice; and getting there is often a dirty business, wading through information that may or may not prove relevant, and pursuing leads that may or may not produce relevant answers, and thereby running the risk of upsetting, or even insulting, people who are uninvolved or free of wrongdoing.
However, in order to uncover important truths, these are always the risks, and they mustn’t stand in the way of honest and truthful investigations, especially where the implications are as severe and as far-reaching as they are for any murder — particularly a political assassination which, in effect, threatens to silence and intimidate others who, as a result, come to fear for their own lives.
As Charlie Kirk once put it, “You better keep asking questions, because it's the only thing that keeps us free.”
Indeed, it is for this particular reason that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution explicitly protects our freedom of speech. As President John F. Kennedy put it in his 1961 address, the freedom of speech is protected “not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply give the public what it wants, but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion.”
The hope, of course, is that, so far as public opinion is angered, the speech will ultimately manage to educate, to spark critical thought and encourage a greater appreciation for truth and the business of getting there.
As for those who say that they don’t care, the truth of the matter is that they are either lying, parroting another source, attempting to lull their contemporaries into indifference, or simply misunderstanding the significance of the moment — not just what it implies about the investigation into the assassination of Charlie Kirk, but what it reveals about the extent to which we can even trust any of the sources and personalities involved or in any way connected to the most high-profile of events; after all, real justice isn’t merely the work of the appointed, but rather the obligation of each member of the public interested in the truth.
The matter at stake here, beyond the assassination of Charlie Kirk, is whether there is even any justification left for the common user of social media to maintain any faith whatever in not just social media itself — which so often serves as a distraction — but the institutions and individuals who use it to continually and effortlessly influence, manipulate, and control so much of the public and its general perspective on issues of great interest and importance. And even among those who present themselves as mere entertainers, the same ends apply to many of them; after all, humor and entertainment are among the most effective of tools for making an audience willing and receptive.
So, while it is understandable that people may not take interest in these events, that they may dislike some or all of the concerned parties, and that people have become rather numb, jaded, or cynical in general, let us not confuse indifference or passivity (or any claims of ‘not caring’) with anything resembling virtue, and let us remember that, in the interest of eternal vigilance and for the sake of maintaining sound principles and seeking the truth, there are occasions on which we will, in fact, have to face and deal with dislikable people and uncomfortable issues, and even people and issues that we don’t particularly care about. That is because we, as mortal and fallible human beings, often cannot appreciate the total scope of the issues and the wider implications of our indifference.
In any event, we are scarcely served by celebrating indifference or discouraging people from seeking the truth, and where this continues as common practice, it is too often in service to vanity at the expense of virtue.
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