As we mourn the horror of Charlie’s death, we are left with something far more sinister-feeling than what death normally leaves in its wake, especially when it comes so senselessly, by the hand of a severely disordered mind, as was Charlie’s “alleged” murderer.

I am unable to even come close to understanding the level of hatred, vitriol, bile, and inhumanity being spewed all over every available online outlet — X, TikTok, etc. — in classrooms and on campuses and in the streets by the mindless priests and priestesses of bottomless hate, of such intensity that it seems at times like the robotic party apparatchiks in Orwell’s Two Minutes Hate.

This is not a scholarly dissertation on the various kinds of hate rampant in our country today.  I defer for the studies to real scholars like Dr. Janie Watkins and Jonathan Turley, who have written books on the subject, with both titles having the phrase “Age of Rage” in them.  That said, it does seem to be the basis of what is tearing our country apart.  It seems at times as though half of these “united” states hates the other half because of political ideology. The one side do not respectfully and civilly take issue with those they disagree with; they hate both the person expressing those views and, perhaps more dangerously, the system of government that preserves the God-given right to do so.

Some, if not most, of these vile purveyors of poisonous hatred are the same people who are celebrating the murder of 1,200 Jews by Hamas on October 7, 2023; are hoping for the annihilation of Israel “from the river to the sea”; and are appalled that Israel would do what every nation since the dawn of time has done when attacked by an enemy: do all in its  power to kill that enemy.  These so-called “highly educated” “elites” can no more name “the river” or “the sea” than many of the paid protesters in the 2020 “Summer of Love” could tell you the history of the hero or heroine whose statue they were pulling down.

But they knew one thing: Whoever it was, they hated him with blind, searing, raging hatred, which was, and is, the driving force in their pathetic, tawdry lives.

I have seen many comments since Wednesday describing in various ways that we are seeing the work of Satan and that we may well be living in the beginning stages of the next civil war.

I was taught in the course of my many years that one should use the word “evil” sparingly, as there are few, or according to some, no actual evil human beings, since we are all made in God’s image.  How anyone can hold to that belief after the last century in which we have seen real evil in the forms of Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mussolini, and many others is quite beyond me.

I have also never understood the intensity of “the oldest hatred,” antisemitism, as any idea that there was ever a reason to hate a Jew was never part of our upbringing or our young experience.  It seems, as the poignant song from South Pacific teaches, as though “you’ve got to be taught, carefully taught” to hate another human being with that level of intensity all your life.

How exactly does one have a polite exchange of views with someone of the ilk of the minority leader of the Senate, who stands on a street corner in New York City bellowing “f--- Trump” through a bullhorn, or a member of Congress from Somalia who says Charlie got what he deserved because he did not sufficiently honor the blessed memory of George Floyd?

I am far too old for any of these doubts and queries to be attributed to naïveté.  I spent much of my life as a trial lawyer, so these views, by definition, cannot be said to have come from a cloistered existence.  Like any observer of the last decade generally, and the last month specifically, who has children and grandchildren, I cannot help but feel a dark and troubling sense of foreboding for the country I love so unabashedly if something is not done soon to bank these spreading fires of hatred.

I feel, and it pains me deeply to say it, that the Great American Experiment that gave the world the greatest nation ever devised by the mind of man is staring straight down into the abyss.

I cannot think of a better way to honor Charlie’s memory than to close with his own iconic words: Prove me wrong.

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