Who Benefits from the Debate about the Assassination of (insert X)?

Cancel policy and murder have become an integral part of the political debate in many Western countries. That only means they are catching up with what has been the case in other places for decades: shutting up people with different opinions. There are few who look for real solutions. It seems the biggest chunk of the debate is about whose fault it is. What we should ask is: who benefits and possibly most importantly what are our common interests as voters?

The Familiar Pattern

The murder of Charlie Kirk followed the established pattern: outrage (some of it real), thoughts and prayers sent to his family and friends (some of them real) followed by the wait for another gun shot. Not another assassination but the starter gun for the obligatory mud-slinging. The culprit (this time) is the left. When the two Democratic Minnesota state politicians were murdered in June it was the right. So, technically 50% of the population in either case.
There is the added hand wringing in non-U.S. media about the horrible state of affairs of American politics and experts on U.S. politics (some of them real) are called in to pontificate. Never mind the same trend in their own country, perhaps less murderous but certainly not without assassinations, including for example the 2016 killing of Jo Cox in the UK or the 2019 murder of Walter Lübcke in Germany.

A Fearful Electorate is Easy to Control

This creates fear — and when the electorate becomes fearful, both the political elite and the business elite benefit. A fearful electorate is easier to control as it turns to the one who promises to take care of their fears and who will provide security. The political elite, irrespective of party, know increasing political polarization plays into their hands. All they have to do is to provide security. That can be in the form of more uniforms in the street (the National Guard) or the opposite, no uniforms at all (defund the police). It all depends on what people fear.
The business elite benefits from a fearful electorate because they provide security in the form of hardware and software. From guns and weapons to alarm systems and metal detectors in schools to data collection, face recognition software and Alexa/Siri type technologies or video clips to movie streaming to keep our minds of the real questions. In the right environment, Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple would just be a couple of keyboard strokes away from facilitating ultra surveillance. 
Making the electorate afraid by actively joining the mud-slinging and appealing to the true “believers” takes the slicing and dicing of our society further and further, down to within groupings. Instead of "Republicans", we now have real conservatives as opposed to RINOs (Republican in name only). The queer community stopped adding letters moving from gays/lesbians to LGTBQ+. Both have the same results: making our worlds smaller and smaller and pitting us against each other.

We Are More United than the Media Makes Us Believe

The electorate has not been an impotent bystander in this. We allowed us to be sliced and diced and believed in the narrative that the other party either wants to ruin our country or they are coming after us. Yes, there are extremists in both camps who will kill you for your sexual orientation or your political views. However, political violence in the United States has constantly decreased since 2019 according to The Prosecution Project. And instead of tallying up which extremists killed the most and allowing the elite to let us believe these extremists are representative of 50% of the other half of the country, we have a choice. Instead of choosing violence and/or condemnation of imaginary enemies, we can accept that there is broad agreement on core issues concerning our society, including:

• Close to 90% of the entire U.S. population believe all levels of government must be accountable to the people (NORC)
• 60% of Americans believe citizen involvement is crucial for solving our community and national issues (NORC)
• 58% of U.S. adults favor stricter gun laws (PEW)
• 61% of Americans see immigration generally as a positive for the country (Gallup)
• 64% of U.S. adults believe abortion should be legal in most or all cases (NORC)
• 79% of U.S. adults believe social benefits should not be reduced in any way (PEW)

Personally, I do not support everything on that list or I may care less about one than about the other. But part of how democracy works is that I accept the will of the majority, while the majority accepts my dissent. And if I don’t like it, I can campaign against it. 

Focus on Our Role 

The best analogy I can think of right now is the year I spent being treated for leukemia. On the cancer ward, no one cared whether I was a Democrat or a Republican. No one cared whether our nurses were LGTBQ+. I could not have cared less whether my doctors were Christian or Hindu. Everyone on that ward had a shared goal: increase the chance for survival by whatever means possible. 
I am pretty sure most Americans have always wanted America to be a great country — well before it became a slogan. We share the same goal. Imagine our elected officials spending time on addressing these real issues which impact the vast majority of voters instead of using any excuse (even murder) to polarize us even more. Imagine ourselves actually walking the talk and hold government accountable for whether it finds solutions for these problems. Imagine us preferring our government officials engaging in constructive debates rather than scoring points in shouting matches conducted over social media. If the 60% who professed a belief in political participation really participated things would look different.

Always Be Vigilant

We gain more from participating by identifying what we can contribute to bringing us to a shared goal. And then we can hold the feet of our elected representatives to the fire. I am closing quoting Tony Benn and his five questions about power in a democracy:

1. “What power have you got?”
2. “Where did you get it from?”
3. “In whose interests do you use it?”
4. “To whom are you accountable?”
5. “How do we get rid of you?”

We should ask them all the time with the knowledge there is more we agree on than we are being told.