"Charlie Kirk himself understood that politics today is performed through provocation, memes, and culture war — what Utah’s Governor Spencer Cox calls “algorithmically incentivized ghoulishness.” Kirk thrived in that world, mixing the habits of a democratic debater with the instincts of a pugilist. His method was to provoke, to needle, to troll — often in the name of debate and free speech. That mix — democratic in aspiration, combative in style — made him both a powerful voice in America’s fractured public square and a symbol of its degradation. His murder, so young, at the hands of a young man undone by the same meme-saturated culture is a tragic irony. It shows just how thin the line has become between pluralist debate and weaponized alienation."  --Roger Berkowitz, The Fine Line Between Pluralist Debate and Weaponized Alienation