It has been four days since the murder of Charlie Kirk. If you’ve somehow missed this story, he was a right-wing author and media personality. He was assassinated while speaking in front of a crowd of about 3,000 at a university in Utah by being shot in the head.

Since news of the shooting broke, I have read many posts and reactions online. Some of my own friends have posted reactions that I don’t agree with. Reactions that are echoed by far too many other people.

Let me be clear. I didn’t really know who Charlie Kirk was until he was killed. I live in Canada, and American right-wing pundits don’t really get on my radar unless they get elected President. I am, however, quite familiar with a lot of their rhetoric. In a modern setting with so many news outlets, it’s impossible not to be. I don’t like most of that rhetoric, and, honestly, the rest I simply am not aware of enough to disagree with. Some of those opinions, especially those regarding opposition to gun control, abortion, and LGBTQ rights, I not only disagree with, I fear are actively dangerous.

Because of Kirk’s opinion on LGBTQ rights, I’ve seen many comments that were variations of “He didn’t think I should be alive, so I’m not sorry he isn’t anymore.” I’ve even seen a few that were more rejoiceful that he’d died, thinking it was one less alt-right voice clogging the airwaves. Except it isn’t. The people who agree with his viewpoints now have another martyr to their cause. By murdering him, his detractors did not strengthen their argument, they weakened it. There have been martyrs on both sides of the great ideological divide that seperates us, and there unfortunately will be others. Some will expouse views I agree with, others won’t. But the loss of any of them, even the latter, is a tragedy.

There have been mass killings throughout history, some large enough to be called genocide. We decry these killings. It’s hard to find someone who is pro-genocide in general. And yet, when a mass killing happens, the law of averages dictates that some of the victims will turn out to be people you wouldn’t have liked if you knew them better. If a mad bomber were to blow up a shopping centre and kill a hundred people, I’m pretty sure that some of those shoppers would be people I’d have had a problem with if I’d discussed politics with them prior to their deaths. But when a hundred people are killed, do we say “I’ll feel bad for those I agreed with and the others I’m indifferent about?” Do we reduce the number of deaths to a tally of only those we thought were “good” people? Of course we don’t. And if it’s unacceptable to do it to killings on a mass scale, why is it all right to do it on small-scale murders?

Charlie Kirk’s worldview was that those who thought like he did were part of ”us”, the good people, the people who were the correct people. Those who disagree, who live their lives according to different values, became part of the other group, the “them”. Charlie Kirk thought that if you were someone who was attracted to those with the same genitalia as you, you were “them”. There were a lot of things that, in his opinion, could make you one of ”them”. But those who justify indifference or relief at news of his murder have the same viewpoint. If you’re one of those, you should definitely avoid universities in Utah ‘cause you’re Charlie Kirk. Oh, your “us” and “them” may be different than his, but so long as you reduce people like he did, you’re cut from the same cloth as he was.

There is no “us” and “them”. There is only “us”. I personally have never met anyone with whom I agree 100% on everything. Does that mean everyone in the world besides me is “them?” No, because that would be ridiculous. Regardless of how somebody else feels about an issue, or two or a dozen or a thousand, they’re part of “us”. Do I like all of us? I do not. As a matter of fact, a lot of us get on my nerves. Some really scare me. But that doesn’t mean those people become “them”. They’re still part of “us”. They have to be.

There is no excuse to separate people into camps, not for any reason. I am a survivor of parental neglect, domestic abuse and sexual assault. I have been ostracized from my community for speaking the wrong language or being attracted to the wrong people. I have been the victim of slights great and small throughout my life. Yet I refuse to think of anyone who did me wrong as not part of us. I may not wanna talk to certain people anymore (heck, some days, I don’t wanna talk to anybody at all!), but I won’t let myself fall into the trap of thinking of them as a different, separate group.

Charlie Kirk is dead, and he shouldn’t be. He was one of us, even if he probably didn’t agree with being considered as such. When one of us dies before their time, we are all the lesser for it. And that goes for all those murdered, whether they were killed alone or in groups, for what someone thought was a good reason or if they were randomly killed. It goes for the murder of Charlie Kirk, and that of Melissa Hortman, Brian Thompson, Harvey Milk, Phil Hartman, Aleksei Navalny, Indira Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. or the Kennedys.

If you can’t feel anything for this latest murder because there have been so many that you’re just exhausted, I feel bad but I understand. But if you think someone’s opinion on an issue, political or otherwise, means their life doesn’t matter, then remember that there are those who feel that way about an opinion you hold. So if you’re killed over it, they’ll be just as indifferent about it. Is this really a world you’re happy to be in?