Can this really be a turning point?

T he country truly could be at a turning point in its politics of rage, tweets, Truths, online postings and rhetoric, as many of our leaders are saying now.

Let’s add in another ingredient to this recipe: We, the People.

Trite as I know that sounds, the power has always been ours to lower the political rage that too often reaches beyond the boiling point – as with the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk this week.

I was watching Kasie Hunt’s show on CNN the day of the shooting, before authorities arrested a young man for the killing.

First, Hunt showed a clip of President Trump’s video reacting to the murder in which he shared his condolences to his friend’s family and quickly segued into blaming the “radical left” for fomenting a climate of rage, despite having no knowledge of the shooter’s motives (which we still don’t really know).

Hunt had a panel of one Republican partisan, one Democratic partisan, and two others. When the show switched back from Trump’s video to that panel, no one on the panel commented on Trump’s statement – the Democrat didn’t attack it for its partisan tone, and the Republican (a senior advisor on the last Trump campaign) didn’t endorse it or even mention it.

The panel just discussed the shooting and what comes next, with no reference at all to the President of the United States.

And, the discussion was thoughtful, calm, and reasoned. No one yelled at each other, no one screamed partisan talking points and tried to point fingers of blame at one party or person or the other.

To me, it was a shocking (in a good way) television talking heads’ moment. They ignored the gas Trump was pouring on the fire and just talked – with each other, not against each other. Not reacting to the loudest voice in the country.

Could this be part of the answer to our political rage? Ignoring the loudest voice in the room, and getting on with solving or at least discussing the issue(s) as a way to work through them?

Then the Republican governor of Utah, where the Kirk murder took place, announced authorities had the person they believe killed Kirk in custody. Gov. Spencer Cox, who has a history of trying to get the political “sides” to return to talking civilly to each other, gave the information we all wanted to hear in a professional manner.

Then, speaking to the younger people of our country, he said, “Your generation has an opportunity to build a culture that is very different than what we are suffering through right now, not by pretending differences don’t matter, but by embracing our differences and having those hard conversations.”

Such a reasonable observation, such a rational observation.

Meantime, last morning on Fox News, President Trump said, among other things, “the radicals on the left are the problem, and they’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy.”

Two different approaches to the potential turning point our country faces politically now.

We can continue to raise our blood pressures by watching the “sides” try to out-do each other, join in, pile up the “likes” and re-posts, and grab the immediate attention, or we can return to the American experiment that has served us all so well for these two plus centuries and talk with each other about our differences, about our policy choices and about what kind of civilization we want in our country.

I’ve never been accused of being an optimist. And I know I sound like Pollyanna.

But I go for lowering the temperature, stopping the violence, and talking it out with each other. Like we used to do.

What do you choose?

GOING FURTHER

• With Few Facts About Kirk Shooting, Wild Speculation Abounds | THE NEW YORK TIMES

• Utah governor, known for 'disagreeing better,' calls for calm after Kirk shooting | NPR

• Trump’s cherry-picked claims on political violence ignore his own rhetoric | CNN

Sources:

▪ This piece was first published in The Screaming Moderate and re-published in Europeans TODAY on 15 September 2025 under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. | The author writes in a personal capacity.

▪ Cover: Dreamstime/Korwen. AI-Gen.