This was meant to intimidate people. Don’t let it.

Charlie Kirk, head of the young Republican juggernaut Turning Point USA, was assassinated today in Utah during a public forum.

I want to emphasize that verb before I move any further. This man was not merely “shot,” or “killed.” This has all the markings of a political assassination, and I feel free to say that despite the fact that — as incomprehensible as it is to say — the shooter remains at large. (A suspect initially taken into custody at the scene was reported not to be the killer.) The nightmare continues onward.

Others will write the obituary for a man who worked his ass off for the young conservative movement, on the front lines performing arbitrage between the kids and the Establishment, and starting at an age (18 years old) when I myself was still in the “smoking dope and listening to the Grateful Dead” phase of life during my own college era. I appreciate the important work that he did in his young life — and Donald Trump’s reelection is proof of its value — but I am too fired up to properly discuss it right now.

Instead, I am angry. I am grinding metal and shooting off sparks as I try to process this. I quite frankly lack sufficient words. I am better at this when there are happy endings to celebrate. I can only think of the overwhelming wave of relief I felt when Trump faced the same sort of situation in Butler, Pa., last summer, but lived . . . and then I start to lose my composure when I contrast that with the utterly harrowing videos I have been forced to watch from today’s events. (Avoid them, I beg of you.)

But, if not angry, I want you to be defiant, at the very least. Turn your sorrow into something purposeful. Good lord, I hate to feel like I’m sounding the same notes I regularly criticize when I hear them tooting from the left (“just do something!”), but this is different. This was a political assassination. This was a blow against public participation in the debate. I will never be one one-hundredth as famous as Charlie Kirk was, but when I saw him sitting there answering questions before the moment came, I felt a harrowingly inevitable twinge of recognition: That could have been me. (Or you. Or anyone.) Shot dead for no other reason than getting into arena and arguing a point. This was meant to intimidate people. And it does put the fear of God into a man, quite literally.

But it won’t intimidate me. The less said about the person who shot Charlie Kirk, whoever he turns out to be, the better. I don’t particularly care about his reasons. (I suddenly find myself softening up on my typical anti-death penalty proclivities, however.) Instead I feel like we are dealing with an entire political generation that believes in the “Propaganda of the Deed,” and the deeds are always bloody and profane. Once again in recent weeks, I find myself ending with the same observation, and for the same reasons: Something wicked this way comes. But I want to add something more than my typical counsel of despair: You can make sure that Charlie Kirk didn’t die in vain by getting out there in the arena yourself, and speaking your mind.