The Day the World Felt Less Good
Title: The Day the World Felt Less Good
We were standing around the site office when someone mentioned Charlie Kirk. Not in passing—his murder. The air shifted. No one said much at first. We didn’t know him personally. We didn’t follow him religiously. But we all felt it: the world wasn’t better off today than it was yesterday.
It wasn’t about politics. It was about something deeper—something human. A man was shot for speaking. For being provocative. For being alive in a way that challenged others. And that loss, whether you agreed with him or not, felt like a crack in the floor beneath us.
Later that afternoon, my son asked me why Charlie had been killed. He’s intellectually disabled. He sees only good in the world. He believes people are kind, that problems can be solved with patience and love. I told him the truth as best I could: that when people can’t rationally debate someone smarter than them, they sometimes turn to violence.
He looked at me, confused. He couldn’t process the logic in that statement. And honestly, neither could I.
What do you say when the world doesn’t make sense? When decency snaps under pressure? When disagreement becomes a death sentence?
And then came the part that made me sick: the celebration. Online. In comment threads. People cheering his death. Not mourning. Not reflecting. Just reveling. As if the extinguishing of a life was a win. That kind of response isn’t political. It’s spiritual rot. It’s the corrosion of empathy. And it should disgust every decent person—left, right, or centre.
I’m not writing this to defend Charlie Kirk’s politics. I’m writing this because I had to explain to my son why someone was killed for speaking. I’m writing this because my workmates—tough, practical blokes—stood around quietly, feeling something they couldn’t quite name. I’m writing this because if we lose the ability to disagree without dehumanizing, we lose something essential.
Charlie Kirk was controversial. But today, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that a human being was taken from this world by someone who believed violence was the answer. And that belief should never go unchallenged.
Because today, the world feels less good than it did yesterday. And that should matter to all of us.
