The Murder of Charlie Kirk and its Aftermath: Processing My Anger

As a Buddhist psychotherapist, I have found that anger, when fully processed, subsides and transforms into fear or sadness or results in insight leading to compassion for self and other. The murder of Charlie Kirk and its equally horrific aftermath has provided an opportunity for me to work with my anger to further my progress on the Buddhist path.

As author, poet and Buddhist teacher Stephen Levine, eloquently said^[i]:

The investigation of anger…leads us directly to the love beneath, to our underlying nature. When we bring anger into the area where we can respond to it, where we can investigate it, where we can embrace it, it emerges into the light of our wholeness….Then anger is no longer a hindrance, but a profound teacher.

As I process my anger about the divisive and deceitful nature of the discourse following the murder of Charlie Kirk, I am experiencing fear, sadness, and also grief. I grieve for what my country once stood for. The black and white thinking that this administration encourages – us vs. them – is so toxic. I am clearly in the “them” camp, and feel disenfranchised by those who are supposed to represent me and all residents of the United States.

As an “an aspiring bodhisattva,” I try to have compassion for all beings, and wish them to be free of suffering. I must admit that it has become increasingly difficult for me to have compassion for Donald Trump. It is easier and less vulnerable to lash out in anger, rather than truly experience deep fear and sadness.

As I investigate my anger and try to have some understanding about Trump’s behavior, I see a scared little boy behind Trump’s tough guy façade. I can have compassion for that scared little boy. Sometimes Trump’s eyes seem eerily empty, a reflection of a person who has been called “an existence without a soul.”^[ii] Trump’s mother has been described as emotionally distant and frequently absent. His father has been described as a tyrant. I can imagine Trump’s father tauntingly calling his son a loser and telling him never to admit defeat. Dr. Justin Frank notes:

One of the things that you do when you’re feeling ignored and abandoned in some way is develop contempt for that part of yourself. You have the hatred of your own weakness and you then become a bully and make other people feel weak, or mock other people to make it clear that you’re the strong one and that you don’t have any needs.^[iii]

And then there are the enablers of Trump’s actions and those who support him. They too are driven by fear – fear of being bullied by Trump, fear of losing power, fear of the “other”, fear that the beliefs around which they built their lives will be shattered, fear of the ambiguous grays between the black and white. Compassion for all of these folks is a big challenge for me at present. I just have to keep looking at my experience and, with the ground of the dharma and my Buddhist practice, see where the path leads me.

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^[i] Stephen Levine (1987). Healing into Life and Death. New York: Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

^[ii] Dan McAdams (June 2016). “The Mind of Donald Trump.” The Atlantic, quoting Mark Singer, who interviewed Trump for a profile published as “Trump Solo” in The New Yorker (May 19, 1997).

^[iii] David Smith. (September 29, 2018). “Mommy Dearest: A Psychiatrist Puts Trump on the Couch.” The Guardian.