By Kaeley Harms, Saturday, September 20, 2025Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesDisclaimer: I count myself blessed to know a great number of reasonable, kind, compassionate people on the political left, people who unequivocally condemned the assassination of Charlie Kirk and who are consistent in their standards. This article is not about them. It’s directed toward the others.During my first marriage, after a violent fight when my narcissistic ex headbutted me and hurled misogynistic slurs, he sent me an “apology” email.It began: “I’m sorry I let you make me so angry.” What followed wasn’t repentance. It was a list of demands: lose weight, dress hotter, and meet his terms. I was the one bleeding and humiliated, and yet he positioned himself as the victim.That was the moment I realized: no relationship can heal if one side refuses to confront its own sins.That’s exactly how I feel about my relationship with progressives in this country right now.I’ve spent the last week grasping for words to articulate the seismic shift so many of us have felt in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s execution. It’s not an exaggeration to say it feels as if the ground itself has shifted beneath us. I’ve been stunned by how deeply it has pierced me — especially since I didn’t even agree with him on every position or priority. But here’s the truth: agreement was never the point.At the root of it, so many of us who have been beaten down, mocked, censored, and told we don’t belong looked at Charlie and saw hope. He was unapologetic in his convictions, yet willing to stand in public and bear the weight of scorn that would have crushed others. For those of us who have spent years feeling trampled by the cultural left — dismissed as backward, dangerous, or disposable — Charlie embodied something rare: the assurance that we weren’t crazy, we weren’t alone, and we weren’t finished.That’s why his death feels like more than a personal loss or even a political blow. It feels like a violent tearing away of one of the few figures who stood as a signpost that resilience and courage could still triumph over intimidation. His execution wasn’t just the silencing of a man — it was the attempted extinguishing of the hope he carried for millions who had been told their voices didn’t matter.And then some punk kid with a twisted fetish shot him down. In public. In front of his children. And progressives laughed. You said he deserved it. You made memes with graphic images of blood spurting out of his neck. And you did it all while preserving the crazy delusion that you are the ones who oppose hate.For a decade, you have mocked and silenced anyone who dared dissent.People with the temerity to express support for stronger borders? Racist. Canceled. Opposition to men in girls’ locker room showers? Transphobic. Canceled. Concerned about rushed medical experiments that strip bodily autonomy from the masses? Dangerous. Here’s a government portal to report your neighbor. Canceled.Every time.So now we are reading reports of progressives being hoisted by their own petard — teachers being fired for celebrating Kirk’s death on social media, late-night talk show hosts being canceled for their own objectively hateful rhetoric.For years, the Left has tightened the noose around free speech, punishing dissenters, reporting neighbors, threatening livelihoods, even lives, for the crime of calling a man a man. And now? Now you want to posture as defenders of open discourse. Really? Where were you?And here’s the bitter irony: even as conservatives grieve, even as we bury our dead, your late-night court jesters use our wounds as punchlines. Jimmy Kimmel’s “primary job” is to entertain, to unite audiences in laughter. Instead, he exploited a brutal murder to insult half the country. Tell me: what other job in America allows you to spit in your customers’ faces while they’re mourning and still keep your paycheck?But now — when it’s your speech at stake — you cry “free speech”? Do you know what happened to a conservative for speaking freely last week? He was executed while addressing an audience at a university. Until you confront that reality, don’t expect sympathy.I’ll tell you what’s happening. You built this system. You enforced it on everyone else. And now you’re beginning to taste its consequences. My sympathy is not high.I try to be fair. I bend, I listen, I compromise. I even call out my own side — like when it looked like Pam Bondi was trying to use government power to muzzle speech. I opposed her because my commitment to freedom of expression doesn’t shift with party lines. (The DOJ has since issued a clarification, for those who are actually interested.) I don’t think the federal government has any business throwing its weight around to get Jimmy Kimmel fired; I think ABC should do that on its own. I remain consistent in my commitment to my self-expressed standards.But some of us are done carrying all the weight. It’s your turn to take some ownership. It’s your turn for self-improvement and accountability.It’s an accountability that’s badly lacking, replaced, instead, by a rabid insistence on blaming the right for its own mistreatment, as evidenced by the mind-numbingly stupid advancement of conspiracy theories that fly in the face of the mountains of evidence illustrating exactly what happened to Charlie Kirk and why.Almost immediately after the killing, a familiar playbook arrived: deny responsibility, attack the grieving, and reverse victim and offender — DARVO. A cacophony of online actors, and even some political voices, raced to shift blame—to each other, to shadowy far-right “Groypers.” That rush to rewrite reality wasn’t a search for truth; it was damage-control and theater.And here’s the danger: this is exactly the place where the far left and the far right meet in the middle — where age-old antisemitism rears its ugly head, offering Jews as a convenient scapegoat for evil neither camp wants to confront in its own ranks. It’s a shortcut, a lie, and a poison that has spared generation after generation from the harder work of real accountability.I get it to a certain extent: Self-defense is human nature. If we’re honest, we all want to distance ourselves as far and fast from evil as is physically possible. It takes a lot of courage and conviction to stare our own demons down and excise them from among us.I also think there are other non-partisan reasons that so many people have been quick to embrace conspiracy explanations about Kirk’s murder rather than accepting the preponderance of evidence right in front of us.It doesn’t help that public trust is at an all-time low. But beyond that, at the heart of it, there’s a deep, unspoken need for the villain to somehow match the stature of the man we lost. We want to imagine that Charlie was so powerful that only vast cabals could conspire to silence him. Because the harder truth is unbearable: that a force of nature, a man of vision and consequence, could be cut down by a pathetic, anonymous gamer with a twisted fetish. His life carried immeasurable meaning, and we ache for his death to reflect more than the smallness of the man who stole it.This is where the gender cult is most dangerous. We’re told to shrug off the lonely, maladjusted trolls as if they’re beneath notice. But in reality, too many of those “losers” are being forged into something lethal — and society won’t even let us name the threat.A reckoning begins with naming. Name the violence. Name the lies. Name the rhetoric that makes violence more thinkable. That’s not theater — it’s repentance. It means holding the platforms, pundits, politicians, and influencers who trafficked in dehumanization to a higher standard, even — and especially — when they are on your team.It also means a collective vow: we will not let grief be weaponized; we will not let ideology blind us to cruelty; we will not trade truth for narrative advantage. We must demand better of our institutions and of each other.I do not want anger to have the last word. But I will not let denial, distraction, or hypocrisy win either. The country is burning at both ends; we can either let it consume us or we can choose to build something harder and truer on the ashes.This is an invitation to reckon. Will you take it?Charlie’s murder shakes us along lines that must divide. I’m not an intensely partisan person. My heart has always been for bridgebuilding and reconciliation. It will remain so. But I will no longer play the role of the bleeding partner blamed for my own wounds while the abuser claims victimhood. No nation can heal if one side refuses to face its own sins. Progressives can deny, deflect, and invert reality — but I will not carry their delusion. My hope didn’t die with Charlie; it is anchored in Christ, whose resurrection silences every lie with life. That’s why, even in grief, I refuse despair.If you want healing, come in truth. Until then, we will stand — unbowed, unashamed, and unwilling to mistake abuse for reconciliation.Kaeley Harms, co-founder of Hands Across the Aisle Women’s Coalition, is a Christian feminist who rarely fits into boxes. She is a truth teller, envelope pusher, Jesus follower, abuse survivor, writer, wife, mom, and lover of words aptly spoken.
Dear progressives, it’s your turn to apologize
