Everything old is new again? Or is it deja vu all over again? Yes, it seems that history repeats itself, or maybe, and probably, we just remember snippets of a memory when something prods our cortex (or is it the hippocampus?).

Last week, a guy smuggled a rifle onto the roof of a college building and assassinated Charlie Kirk as he was explaining his political beliefs to a crowd of college kids. For some reason, and I do not know why, the guy felt it was necessary to silence Mr. Kirk. Instead of offering an alternative to Kirk’s rhetoric, he chose a rifle. This horrific act, which made Kirk’s wife a widow and orphaned his two kids, is against all that is right and decent in our nation.

But it is not the first time this has happened. Look at recent history. In 2024, a kid shot at President Trump and missed his target by a fraction of an inch. We know a nut job flung a firebomb into the home of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. A guy broke into the home of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and attacked her elderly husband with a hammer. The former Speaker of the Minnesota House Melissa Hortman and her husband were shot to death.

Some of these victims and their attackers were Republicans, some were Democrats. Some were conservatives, others liberal. Some were MAGA types and, Lord knows, what lurked in the hearts of others. To some, it seemed the world was starting to crash down around us.

Well, it is not. Our beloved nation has seen other political violence, experienced worse, and survived. A million years ago, when I was in college, I was pulled out of a political science class following the news that a sniper had assassinated President John F. Kennedy. As a young reporter, I remember when Rev. Martin Luther King was shot by a sniper. That night, during an evening political rally in Indianapolis, Robert F. Kennedy Sr. shocked a crowd when he told them of the MLK slaying. A few days later, I stood about 10 feet from RFK Sr. as he delivered a victory speech after winning the 1968 Indiana Democratic Primary. A month later, he was gunned down in Los Angeles.

Four years later, Alabama Gov. George Wallace was shot by a would-be assassin. We all remember when President Ronald Reagan was shot and survived. President Gerald Ford was targeted twice. And, by the way, we lost 620,000 or so Americans in the Civil War, a bitter conflict that showed us that while we can bludgeon our political rivals into the ground, we cannot defeat their ideas or change their minds with a rifle. 

In December 1978, my boss sent me to Memphis, Tennessee to report on the Democratic Party mini-convention. I took time off from this boring event to accompany two prominent black Indianapolis political leaders to the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King was slain. After tipping a guide a few bucks, he showed us to a room where MLK ate his last meal where remnants of a fish dinner still decorated a plate. The two democratic pols, both tough survivors of bitter political brawls, stood still, as tears rolled down their cheeks.

I walked outside looking up at the building where the shooter poked his rifle out a window and pulled the trigger. Standing on that balcony, my cortex pinged, bringing me back to the words RFK Sr. spoke while standing on the back of a flatbed truck in a city park. Last week's political slaying flashed his words back to my mind. They are worth sharing today. Here is some of RFK’s speech.

“In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love. But we have to make an effort in the United States. We have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond, or go beyond these rather difficult times. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past, and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder. Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.”

On that cool April evening, almost 60 years ago, RFK Sr. spoke from his heart to a partisan political crowd and, maybe, just maybe, to us all today.

Thoughts and prayers to all.