Certain deaths linger in public memory not only because they are tragic, but because they expose something broken in the relationship between authority and the people it serves. The shootings at Kent State University in 1970 became one such moment. Four students were killed by National Guard troops during a protest. Some of the students were demonstrators, others were simply walking to class. In the aftermath, investigations showed confusion, fear, poor command judgment, and—most importantly—a mindset in which armed force was deemed appropriate against civilians who were perceived as disorderly, threatening, or insufficiently compliant.

Kent State was not only about a single bad decision. It revealed the danger of militarized thinking applied to civilian situations: when troops trained for combat are deployed to manage protest, dissent, or ambiguity, the threshold for lethal force drops, and tragedy becomes more likely.

The death of Ms. Good should give us pause in a similar way.

Whatever the ultimate findings of investigations, what is already clear is that a routine encounter escalated to lethal violence within seconds. A civilian—by all accounts not posing an imminent deadly threat—lost her life during an enforcement action. The justification offered relies on a familiar framework: noncompliance equals danger; danger justifies overwhelming force. This is the same logic that haunted Kent State.

Militarized law enforcement is not defined solely by equipment—armored vehicles, tactical gear, or assault-style weapons. It is defined by mindset. A militarized mindset treats uncertainty as hostility, resistance as aggression, and civilians as potential enemies. It emphasizes domination over engagement, control over communication, and force over patience. In such a framework, the goal is not to resolve a situation safely, but to “neutralize” it.

History shows that this mindset is especially dangerous in civilian contexts. Ordinary people do not behave like trained soldiers. They freeze, panic, misunderstand instructions, argue, hesitate, or comply imperfectly. When law enforcement is trained to interpret those human responses as tactical threats, the margin for error collapses—and the cost of error is paid in blood.

Kent State shocked the nation because it shattered a comforting assumption: that authority, even when armed, would exercise restraint when dealing with its own citizens. The students were not foreign combatants. They were not insurgents. They were young people in a public space. The realization that lethal force could be used so indiscriminately forced a reckoning about how power was being deployed.

We should resist the temptation to see Ms. Good’s death as an isolated incident, or to wait for legal proceedings alone to settle its meaning. A Kent State moment is not defined by a verdict; it is defined by recognition. Recognition that something larger than one individual decision is at work. Recognition that narratives of threat, cultivated over years, can prime institutions to respond with violence first and reflection later.

This recognition matters now because militarization has expanded far beyond crowd control. Federal, state, and local agencies increasingly operate as if they are entering hostile territory when engaging with the public. This posture is reinforced by political rhetoric, by entertainment that glorifies decisive violence, and by internal cultures that reward dominance rather than de-escalation.

The danger is not merely to those who are targeted by enforcement actions. It is to everyone. Once lethal force becomes normalized as a response to ambiguity, no one can be certain where the line truly lies. Kent State taught us that even proximity—not participation—offers no protection when fear governs judgment.

If we fail to treat moments like this as warnings, history suggests what follows: hardened positions, defensive justifications, and gradual acceptance of what once would have been unthinkable. A society that does not pause after such deaths risks training itself to look away.

Calling this a “Kent State moment” is a caution. It is a reminder that the line between order and oppression is crossed not all at once, but incrementally—each time fear is allowed to override restraint, and each time violence is excused as unavoidable rather than examined as preventable.

The question before us is not only what happened to Ms. Good, but what we are willing to learn from it. History has already shown us the cost of failing to do so.

Trump wants to take the US to war to recover and dominate the world’s largest oil reserves.

Venezuela, which once welcomed American energy companies, has the world’s largest oil reserves. President Trump wants access to them again. He wrote on social media that U.S. operations there would continue until the country returned to the United States “all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”

That helps explain the last three months.

Venezuelan Navy Escorts Vessels After Trump’s Blockade Threat

The Venezuelan government was said to have ordered the escort, according to two people familiar with the matter. It was not immediately clear whether the vessels were subject to U.S. sanctions.

America’s current mad monk Rasputin, Stephen Miller, is driving this. The NY Times quotes him, “American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela,” he wrote. “Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property. These pillaged assets were then used to fund terrorism and flood our streets with killers, mercenaries and drugs.”

It’s not in anyone’s long-term interest to develop more cheap fossil energy sources. But It’s had to see that when big oil’s political and economic influence is at work.

As an aside, who believes that the drug cartels of South America need oil money to sell their products in US cities and towns? It is our addictive society that creates the demand, and our affluence that provides the money to buy them. Oil money subsidy? Nah. The free market works just fine for the cartels. They just need a little graft to move the product and recover the proceeds of the sale. There’s talk that presidents, and bitcoins are useful.

Live by the Sword, Die by the Sword

The murder of Charlie Kirk is tragic. Violence has no place in a democracy, and it should have no place in human relations at any scale. Full stop.

Yet we must also admit that this killing is not a bolt from the blue. It is the grim, predictable consequence of a culture that has allowed violent rhetoric to flourish and has winked at those who carry it into action. The sword that Kirk and his allies unsheathed — as a metaphor, as a political weapon — has now cut back.

Charlie Kirk was one of the loudest voices of the MAGA era. Through Turning Point USA, he amplified messages that vilified opponents, questioned elections, and stoked resentment. He portrayed politics not as a contest of ideas but as a war for the nation’s survival. For his followers, this was energizing. For his critics, it was destabilizing.

The alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, was no progressive. Early reports suggest he was influenced by a strain of extremism so far to the right that Kirk himself appeared too soft, too compromised. His rifle carried inscriptions, grim slogans, a private catechism of radicalization. This was not an act of the left striking the right — it was the fringe consuming its own.

Violence does not erupt in a vacuum. It is cultivated. In the years since January 6th, a Republican president pardoned those convicted of storming the Capitol. Some Republican leaders have called them “hostages” and “political prisoners.” Ashli Babbitt — shot while attempting to breach the Speaker’s Lobby — has been elevated to the status of a martyr and patriot.

These choices are not mere symbolism; they are signals. They tell followers that violence in service of the cause is not just forgivable but honorable. They transform criminality into heroism, and they dare the next zealot to go further.

Democratic leaders have not been perfect — property damage during protests was at times excused or underplayed — but the left has neither endorsed nor executed a systemic pattern of pardons or promises of immunity for violent actors. That is the asymmetry we face: one party increasingly normalizes force as a tool of politics, while the other still clings, however imperfectly, to peaceful government of, by, and for the people.

I remain amazed at the restraint shown by the Capitol Police and other law enforcement officers on January 6th. Facing a mob intent on violence — some wielding weapons, many screaming threats — the officers mostly refrained from drawing or firing their weapons. They absorbed beatings, chemical sprays, and broken bones, buying time for lawmakers to escape and for order to be restored. That was discipline. That was courage. That was a commitment to life over death, even when threatened with death themselves.

Do we owe a similar discipline in our words as we react to Charlie Kirk’s death? It is tempting to say that he courted violence and met the fate his rhetoric invited — to make “live by the sword” a kind of cosmic justice.

But democracy requires us to reject vengeance as a political language. We can condemn Kirk’s divisive speech and the politics he championed without celebrating his death. To do otherwise mirrors the very logic we oppose: that political differences should be settled by force.

A Warning and a Plea

This killing is a warning: the flames that leaders stoke cannot be so easily controlled. The sword, once drawn, swings in all directions. Those who call their opponents traitors should not be surprised when someone decides to treat them as such.

We are approaching a breaking point. If we wish to save democracy — not just its machinery but its spirit — we must disarm our speech as well as our hands. We must demand of leaders that they model restraint, that they stop rewarding extremism, that they make clear that violence, whether from left, right, or fringe, is intolerable.

Charlie Kirk’s death should not become a rallying cry for revenge. It should become a moment of clarity: that no one, not even our fiercest opponents, should be gunned down for what they believe. The sword must be sheathed, for all of us.

Notes

1. Killing of Charlie Kirk – Wikipedia summary of events
2. Charlie Kirk shooting suspect captured after manhunt – Reuters report
3. Accused sniper charged in Utah – AP News coverage
4. Bullet casings carried political messages – Daily Beast investigation
5. Rhetoric around January 6th pardons and martyrdom – NPR analysis