Is Centrist Thought Re-emerging in Intensely, Insanely Polarised America?

After Kirk's abominable killing, Donald Trump’s America was on the brink of another civil war. Enter Erika Kirk.

The United States of America is now a new country called Donald Trump’s America, DTA. 

(Photo: Aroop Mishra/The Quint)

It was end-September and my third trip to the world’s newest country founded on the 20th of January 2025, less than nine months back. This new country is called Donald Trump’s America, DTA, built on the ruins of a 249-year-old grand republic, the United States of America, USA.

While the USA was a constitutional republic, DTA is a “Divine Democracy” whose people and institutions of governance have ordained The Divinity to be Chief Commander of an Authoritarian State. The Divinity - unquestioned, unchallenged, and elected for life - is the Right Reverend Donald J Trump.

I first visited this new country in February 2025. The Divinity had barely settled in, unpacking a torrent of executive orders, from cryptos to forceful water jets in bathrooms. His anger was directed almost solely at pro-Palestine immigrant students. I next visited in May 2025. By then, The Divinity was embroiled in internecine tariff battles. He was busy threatening all and sundry to end wars and not topple the dollar.

Charlie Kirk’s Abominable Assassination

My third visit was just last week. The air was pregnant with unfamiliar politics. Ten days before I landed in the Big Apple, Charlie Kirk, 31, was shot dead at Utah Valley University. He was another college dropout who had convulsed America, not through disruptive technology, but via a proselytising conservative platform called 'Turning Point USA'.

Charlie Kirk’s mission was to neutralise – perhaps even eradicate – liberal thought on American campuses. His energy was infectious, but his actions were devastating.

His attacks on the “Professor Watchlist”, a compilation of liberal academics, were especially vicious and provocative. He had become a religio-cultural icon for right wingers, but an implacable foe of the liberals. He never held political office yet wielded incredible influence. He was The Divinity’s pet political poodle.

Given how toxic and inflammable politics was in the new nation, everybody expected Kirk’s assassination to light an atomic fuse. The Divinity’s anger was uncontrollable: “For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to the Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals”.

The Divinity’s troopers were itching to wield a brutal machete on “radical leftists”. After 264 years, the newly born country, Donald Trump’s America, DTA, was on the brink of another civil war.

Erika Kirk, the Christian Healer

But then Erika Kirk, a 36-year-old Swedish American, former Miss Arizona USA 2012, now pursuing a doctorate in Biblical Studies, Charlie Kirk’s widow and mother of two beautiful, tragically bereaved kids, unfurled an unexpected flag of truce at her husband’s funeral.

“That young man, I forgive him. I forgive him because it was what Christ did, and is what Charlie would do. The answer to hate is not to hate … the answer we know from the gospel is love, and always love, love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us. On the cross, our Savior said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."'

Erika Kirk

The Divinity was shocked. He is incapable of such contrition. Despite the solemnity of the occasion, he blurted out: “Charlie … did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them. That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponents and I don’t want the best for them”. And then, turning towards Erika, he almost slammed her pacifism. “I am sorry, Erika … maybe, you can convince me that that’s not right”.

For the very first time, perhaps, The Divinity was not driving the narrative. His exhortation to “take revenge” was effectively muted by Erika Kirk’s graceful and dignified invocation of Jesus’s crucifixion. A fragile peace has since prevailed.

Jimmy Kimmel, Erika Kirk, and Megyn Kelly: Unlikely Fellow Travelers

Politics got another charge when top-notch comedian and scathing Trump critic, Jimmy Kimmel, was pulled off the network by ABC. Kimmel had alluded to the possible MAGA-affiliation of Kirk’s killer, exposing himself to Trump’s ballistic diatribe.

Kimmel’s sacking wasn’t an abominable murder; nonetheless, it was an egregious assault on constitutional free speech.

One would have thought the MAGA crowd would erupt in vengeful joy. But something strange happened. Republican Senators Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz – yes, even the crude Ted Cruz – commiserated with Kimmel, defending his right to speak. Similarly astonishing concessions by other members of the lynch mob culminated in Kimmel’s reinstatement by ABC.

Now the anti-MAGA brigade lit up at such a quick reversal. They expected Kimmel to unleash a triumphant, liberal war cry in his comeback monologue. But Kimmel was highly restrained and circumspect. His biting, sarcastic commentary was replaced by a statesmanlike invocation to civility. “I have many friends and family members on the other side whom I love and remain close to … (some of my remarks may have been) ill-timed or unclear”. It wasn’t an apology, but he acknowledged his misstatement. He was immensely grateful to Erika Kirk for her “selfless act of grace”. He publicly wept at the “forgiveness by a grieving widow”.

Were Erika Kirk and Jimmy Kimmel trying to heal an impossibly polarised, wounded America?

I finally caught Megyn Kelly at the first post-Charlie Turning Point USA event at Virginia Tech. She is a firebrand litigator, quite the mega-MAGA-media superstar! She is famous for her acerbic put downers against “radical liberals”. But at Virginia Tech, her demeanor was more accommodating than usual towards critical questions.

For instance, she did not have a meltdown and chose to engage when a student asked, “Why do you support a president who contributes to the rhetoric that got your friend Charlie Kirk killed?”. She conceded that Republicans under 30 may have been “lost” to Israel over the Gaza violence. And she criticised Trump’s administration for trying to bury the Epstein Files.

While America remains intensely/insanely polarised, I may have spotted the faintest possible re-emergence of the tiniest desire to reclaim the centrist space that held sway in the republic once known as the United States of America. At least that’s a fleeting – albeit a very, very fleeting – sense I got during my one-week travelogue.

Postscript: Unlike these barely discernible stirrings, one trend was sharply apparent - how the Indian America diaspora is shrinking into the shadows, preferring “safe anonymity”, as MAGA champions continue to attack the community.