The Last Shot at Discourse

“You have to think about one shot. One shot is what it's all about.”—Michael, The Deer Hunter

The dictates of history, ever since the advent of the firearm, are more often than not beholden to a simple shot, and an Irish-American president and an Austrian prince come to mind. In the West, it was out with brutish knives and in with the effectiveness and devastation of the gun, the impersonal nature of which, being a weapon of distance, became the weapon of choice for extremists who, in this day of age, wish not to see their clothes tainted with the blood of their victims—instead opting for an approach far from the gaze of their opponent, in whose stead they place a caricature of the very evil they personify.

Between the gun, the bullet and the man lies an invisible tunnel where the gap between action and effect widens, and where only the outcome of an attack is taken in while the action itself is lost—unlike when a man stabs or cuts down an individual, their hand feeling the shirt which hides the flesh that, once sliced, would thence pour forth the blood of their foe, leaving the body and splattering itself upon its assailant: the stains of which latch upon his clothes and becomes an ethereal memory—a part of him—that cannot be washed away.

Whatever may be lost impersonally between the killer and his victim, there is no such loss in the striking effect of death. All men instinctively fear death—but only those who were naturally placed above the masses— the aristocratic knight and priestly shepherd—were trained to constantly place at the forefront of their thinking the idea of death as expressed in Memento mori (remember death), commonly espoused by those who venture into its jaws willingly, with the beatific glory at their forefront along with the shedding of mortal flesh.

Although the masses in some way shared in this mentality, especially our peasant forefathers who lived everyday waiting for Christ’s return knowing that at any moment—whether by sickness, age, or pure accident—their life could be snatched up by Sister Death to be received into the embrace of our Lord; nevertheless the horror of death for the ordinary peasant lied not in the natural and banal endings of life, but rather in its being taken by another who, like them, was made in the image of God.

Whereas the knight, though at times also affected by the death of a comrade in arms (especially that of a beloved friend and companion), is nevertheless trained to know and understand that any man is capable of taking a life, and that the cultivation of martial virtue through training and practice cannot but elevate them—in both body and soul—through the transfiguration of war.

But we have now detached ourselves from this once sacred world for an era of constant hysteria, fueled by the masses and their total consumption of the fear of death! And the kind of death which greatly strikes the masses of today the most is not the statistical death (the gravity of which becomes less and less not so by the number of deaths but by its treatment as mere numerical fact for the purpose of calculation) but the death of a single value; that of a man so beloved by the hoi polloi that he was hated by those radically “in the know”—the post-liberals, as we say—for his perceived normality.

They hated him, but did not know him—and neither did I. He was, to me, a shadow in a cave: I saw his silhouette and believed I knew all that was necessary—but Plato swung his arm, catching me in the fallacy of my own hubris.

I recall Mark Antony’s eulogy in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, by which he restored the honor of a man whom the crowd had once reviled—only to hear of the virtue which would have been laid to the bones save for that subtle oration. Now, as the mourning for the death of Charlie Kirk has tempered and people have begun to speak their minds on this matter (not without some pessimism and cold political calculation), I saw in them what and who Charlie was: his humility, his magnanimity, and his faith to which I could never compare.

He was a man of great soul. Stories of Charlie Kirk’s life and who he really was brought upon us a collective lamentation—not on what was lost, but rather on our guilt and shame for the way we despised him as someone politically inferior; for the way we sullied ourselves with delusions of superiority over someone such as himself: a kingmaker, a maverick, a political titan, and one who believed in the mission—his mission—, which can be summarized thus: to bring back the dignity and glory his country deserved.

At just thirty-one years of age, he had already achieved more than anyone could wish for: to reach both elites and the masses alike. His closest observers described him as a political workhorse: never ceasing and always on the move, always with the same admirable perseverance that, shamefully, we were blind to see.

But his greatest strength lay not in the political halls or conventions, nor in his magnetism towards both the young and old of his nation, but in his wholehearted sincerity. While others grift and cash in their winnings, Charlie was someone who, with sincerity, believed that the path forward for his nation was through a sincere dedication to the welfare of his country and of the lost practice of open dialogue and debate.

But now that’s gone, and there’s no point left in it. I have come to the conclusion (along with others who tried to do as Charlie did, only to come to the conclusion early on how pointless it was) that The Times, as Bob Dylan put it, Are a-Changin’. A few prominent figures on the Right still fail to understand that we are long past the point of “Change My Mind” or “Owning the Libs”. No amount of debunking through Facebook captions or video essays will bring about the political change necessary to achieve what we on the Right (for the most part) want to achieve: to restore Divine transcendence in the lives of the people.

And to this end, what we need is a renewal of our politics and our methods: an emphasis on action and the complete adoption of the friend-enemy distinction. We need, as the right wing, the change of organize, to become an effective political force, to become a group which functions as both a bulwark and a bunker against the leftist deluge of the coming years and an avenue for disillusioned conservative youths to channel their talents, their anger, their dreams, and their faith in a program of action that gives more than just political theatre and performative protest.

Now, as Christians, we cannot simply let those on the Left fall by the wayside. The image of God is not lost even on the propagators of chaos. But we should acknowledge that any attempt at dialogue will only lead to a repetitive cycle where neither concedes, but shall instead double down on the very perspectives they bring to the table, a perpetual frame game. The true dialectic of ideas is void on the Left, for it has, by its own chaotic nature, swallowed all consistency and truth in order to further feed the demon of entropy summoned by their rebellion against God.

Whereas those on the Right (although some among us are more sympathetic to the ideas of the Left) have learned to adopt useful concepts wherever they are found, which, like the Pagan temples rectified in Christ, have become the whetstone to further refine and furnish the Right’s dialectical power: juxtaposing true progress over and against the perverse notions of Leftist progressivism.

We must acknowledge that the bullet, death, and martyrdom remain ubiquitous realities. Some of us will have to pay for our actions (good or evil) with our lives. Politics is not some spectator sport to be gawked at over coffee table discussions and wine bar quips for our amusement. It is, in fact, a consequential zero-sum game where the winner has to take it all to end it all. It is true that the Left will always take form one way or the other (for chaos is as permanent as sin), but like sin, it will be defeated by our pursuit of divinity and our constant refusal to surrender to those feelings of hopelessness that many among us have begrudgingly endured.

I now return to the quote I gave at the beginning of this essay: “One shot is what it’s all about.” In The Deer Hunter (where this quote is from) Robert De Niro’s character plays the role of a man who is obsessed with that one shot, whose singular focus is to take down his prey with just a single shot, in order to make it an honorable and wasteless kill (for otherwise it would be cheating).

One shot was all it took to kill Mr. Kirk, and one shot is all that we have to change our country and to do so with the honor and dignity that, if witnessed today, would be conceived as an unorthodox habit in a world where such efforts are seen as useless and burdensome. You have to think of that one shot to make a change and take it before it is lost for good.

For although God’s kingdom will reign inevitably, the laxity of the Christian must not be based on these thoughts of an inevitable kingdom—for as we only have one shot in life to witness either damnation or beatification, so do we have one shot in our lives to give it meaning, to build a future for our progeny, to let the Lord know we are His even before our death.

Thus, I call upon the youth on the right to band themselves together like a bolt of arrows, to organize into a company of saints that would make our heavenly Father and forefathers proud to see us come together as men giving our lives in the name of God, creed, and fellowship. And with no fear of numbers: for if we commit ourselves to the will of God, we shall certainly prevail—just as Maccabeeus’ thousand did against Nicanor’s twenty thousand—over the obscene hordes of pagans, heretics, and apostates who shall scatter like dust in the wind as we, the pillar of Christ, stand firm and behold the world of His glory and hold up the house built by those who have gone before us for the God of our fathers.

Gemini Joey Salvacion was born and raised in the city of Tacloban and currently lives in Metro Manila. He is taking up his B.A. in Political Science in the University of Santo Tomas, where he is a member of UST Pax Romana and the Confradia del Santisimo Rosario. He is currently working on his thesis on Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs.