Sub

As a centrist, I think the reason Charlie Kirk’s killing has caused a wave of people abandoning the left is not because those people realized that the left is worse than the right, but because they realized there’s no difference between tribes at all. That might seem strange, until you understand that the reason so many were part of the left in the first place is because of the illusion of moral superiority. It was attachment to the belief that they were part of the tribe of superior empathy, humanity, and morality. Seeing how many people in their own tribe dehumanized a father and husband (and I keep saying this, which is in fact an apology in itself because he was a damn human and that’s enough) shattered that illusion of moral superiority and proved quite the opposite. Waking up to that can feel very scary. I know that feeling as a former lifelong leftie, but once you realize that your tribal brain has been lying to you this entire time about what you’ve been a part of and what you’ve built your entire identity around, you realize that these lies have been dividing us and dehumanizing us rather than pushing us toward humanity. If we allow ourselves to surrender to this truth that we can no longer ignore, what awaits us on the other end is freedom. That’s the silver lining. Surrendering our tribal identities—all of us, on every and all sides—leads to total freedom of the mind. In his words, I really hope his legacy is a turning point.