PAUL GORDON

“No one knows who next will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed.”

Those words were not spoken on Sept. 10, after the murder of Charlie Kirk. Nor were they spoken after the murder of Melissa Hortman (the speaker of the House for the state of Minnesota who was shot along with her husband and two other state lawmakers in mid-June).

They weren’t spoken after the myriad of school shootings that have afflicted our country the last few years.

Those words were spoken by Robert F. Kennedy Sr. shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968.

Kennedy, father of the idiot now in charge of our country’s health system, was a candidate for president that year. It was only two months later on June 5, 1968, that he, RFK Senior, became the next victim of senseless bloodshed.

I am old enough to remember both of those killings and all the other violence of that time, brought on largely by hatred of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

I heard about King’s murder on the radio riding with my mother to the grocery store. I still remember her shock at hearing the news. I heard about Kennedy the morning after he was shot when my older brother, knowing I liked Kennedy, woke me to tell me he was wounded and then woke me the next morning to tell me he’d died.

What I wasn’t old enough to understand at the time was the real fear my parents and generations older than they felt about the direction our country was headed. We talked about it — at home and at school — in the months and years that followed, so I knew what they felt.

I just didn’t know how they felt.

Now, I think I do.

I was not a fan of Charlie Kirk, nor did I necessarily dislike him. I just didn’t give him much thought. His appeal was to young conservatives and I was more concerned about old conservatives successfully doing their jobs to keep the current administration from taking our country down.

I realize now that I was somewhat naive. His appeal to young conservatives led to anger and hatred from many people, including conservatives, and that’s why he was murdered. That is precisely what we don’t want or need in America right now. It is deepening the chasm between the parties; throughout the country, and even in the capitol — shouting and fighting is erupting as each side damns the other.

Old and young are fighting wars of words on social media that I fear could lead to real violence. I wonder what this country might have come to had Facebook or other social media existed in 1968 or thereabouts. Would Kent State have happened or would things have been even worse?

I realize I’m bringing up a lot of history here, but it is for a reason. We don’t want history to be forgotten; we don’t want it glossed over. We want to learn from it.

We have had enough senseless acts of bloodshed, haven’t we?