On a college campus in Utah, the bullet that traveled nearly 200 yards from an unknown shooter didn’t just pierce MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk. It punctured the idea Kirk himself advanced: that political debate — albeit laced with verbal combat — could force a polarized country to confront its differences, all while advancing his own agenda.

The bullet killed a 31-year-old husband and father of two who helmed a conservative youth movement. And in its wake was a polarized America, left to reckon with whether a Gordian knot of political violence can be untied.

“Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives,” President Donald Trump said in Oval Office comments posted on social media.

The shooting marked the end of another consecutive summer of political violence — three months after the shooting of two Democratic Minnesota lawmakers, one fatal, and five months after an arson attack on Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s mansion, as his family slept inside. And it harkened back to an era of heightened political violence in the 1960s, defined by the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Now, in a country where both sides of an intractable political debate seek to define their movements in bellicose, belligerent terms — “Fight!” Republicans declared after Trump’s first of two assassination attempts; we have to be fighters, Democrats concede now — it’s getting harder to contain.

On the eve of the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks — a day 24 years ago that inspired calls for national unity — it was readily apparent the country lacks a leader who can bridge the increasingly deep divide. And the unprecedented level of rage in American politics has seemingly nowhere to go but our neighbor.

Political violence “is seen as a pressure valve for people,” Hasan Piker, the liberal Twitch streamer and influencer who was set to debate Kirk at Dartmouth College on Sept. 25 on the politics of youth, told POLITICO in an interview. “Democracy is supposed to be said pressure valve. So when the democratic institutions are not working to meet the demands of the overall population, there’s a lot of discontent. And then I think people find themselves in the throes of desperation, or find themselves so angry that they can’t deal with it, that they end up engaging in adventurism, decentralized violence such as this.”

On Capitol Hill, even a moment of silence for Kirk erupted into partisan rancor.

When Speaker Mike Johnson called for a quiet observance for him Wednesday on the House floor, lawmakers stood in what appeared to be a symbol of national unity. But it quickly fell apart.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) asked for a spoken prayer, which led to Democrats jeering and claiming Republicans had virtually ignored a separate school shooting Wednesday. In turn, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) appeared to accuse Democrats of causing the violence. A Democrat responded, “Pass some gun laws!”

In statements, many political leaders sought to project a more solemn tone.

The country’s highest-ranking Democrats and Republicans condemned Kirk’s killing, a demonstration of his massive influence in politics. They also reflected on the recent spate of political violence tearing across the nation.

“I hope we all go through some serious introspection and redouble our efforts to engage in debate passionately, yet peacefully,” former President Bill Clinton said. “Violence and vitriol must be purged from the public square,” former President George W. Bush said. And progressive leader Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said, “This source of gun violence and political violence must end.”

Trump, whose political success is in part owed to Kirk, dispensed with that politesse.

“For years those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals — this kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today,” he said in his address. He promised to “find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it.”

But few Democrats or Republicans seemed ready to publicly grapple with the question of their role in turning down the temperature.

“Democrats own what happened today,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) said Wednesday after Kirk was shot. Asked by a reporter if by that logic Republicans own the shooting of two Democratic state lawmakers in Minnesota, she asked, “Are you kidding me?”

The outpouring of condolences from Democrats over Kirk’s death differed in tone from the reaction among some to another recent high-profile act of violence: the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Thompson’s death triggered a widespread online reaction and, in some corners of social media, even glorification of accused murderer Luigi Mangione.

At the time, Ocasio-Cortez said, “of course, we don’t want to see the chaos that vigilantism presents,” while arguing that the response indicated a “mass bubbling of resentment around the precarity that people have been living with” and saying “I think for people who are surprised, it’s a wake-up call for how much of this exists in our society.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) condemned Thompson’s killing but cautioned that people “can be pushed only so far” and said the “visceral response” online “should be a warning to everyone in the health care system.” Warren later walked back her comments, saying in a statement that “violence is never the answer. Period. I should have been much clearer that there is never a justification for murder.”

On Wednesday, the rush by many Democrats to unequivocally condemn Kirk’s killing subtly signaled, perhaps, that they were chastened by the nation’s heated political environment.

On the campaign trail, some candidates also tried to dial down the rhetoric.

Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic candidate for Michigan’s Senate seat who just weeks ago said, “When they go low, we don’t go high. We take them to the mud and choke them out,” shifted to, “we handle political disagreements with words and not violence in this country. That is the essence of what democracy is about.”

He added that Kirk “was practicing his right to free speech when he was shot this afternoon in Utah. There is no room for this kind of violence in America.”

Democratic New York City mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani decried Kirk’s killing and lamented an “epidemic of suffering” to a crowd Wednesday.

“It is incumbent upon all of us to repair the tears in our shared civic fabric and to make our nation one that is worthy of its greatest ideals,” he said.

At an event in San Antonio on Wednesday evening, Texas Democratic state Rep. James Talarico transformed a planned campaign stop into a community event where he addressed political violence.

“Politics is broken,” Talarico said. “Media is broken. Even our relationships with each other feel broken. My faith — the faith I shared with Charlie Kirk — teaches me to love my neighbor as myself — not just my neighbors who look like me or pray like me or vote like me. I’m called to love all my neighbors the way I love myself.”

Kirk’s event today was the first of his “American Comeback Tour,” but in some ways the America he leaves behind is just as contentious and dangerous as in the 1960s. Back then, a figure like Robert F. Kennedy spoke peace to a crowd in Indianapolis after one such political assassination, that of Martin Luther King Jr.: “We can do well in this country,” Kennedy said, adding that we must “tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.”

When riots raged in other cities, the crowds in Indianapolis before Kennedy dispersed and went home.

Can such a taming happen in 2025? Can America come back from the edge?

“There’s always a way back,” Sen. Mark Kelly, the Arizona Democrat whose wife, former Rep. Gabby Giffords, endured serious gunshot wounds from a 2011 assassination attempt, told POLITICO. “We can find our way back from this, but I think it does, you know, take people to kind of reevaluate.”

On Wednesday, that seemed almost too quaint a notion.