The president has shown no interest in uniting the US, nor in defending free speech – he is weaponising this time for his gain

The public response to the murder of Charlie Kirk in cold blood, has revealed how drastically our democracy – our belief in the importance of free speech and in the irreplaceable life of each and every individual – has deteriorated over the last half century.

I was a senior in high school when John F Kennedy was assassinated, and a senior in college when Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King were killed. Plenty of conspiracy theories, some of which have never been put to rest, were floated and debated. But the difference between what happened then and what we are seeing now is that, in the aftermath of those violent deaths, there was a sense of shared grief, of national mourning. Those tragedies seemed to bring us, as a country, closer together in our shock and sorrow.