Today I have something very personal and special for you. What I am about to share with you is personally painful and private. The shocking assassination of Charlie Kirk on Sept. 11, 2025 has made me feel duty bound to tell the true stories of both family and national tragedies, because I fear what’s coming up next in the days, weeks, months, and next couple of years, here in the US.
Charlie Kirk was not the first and only recent victim of political assassination, and his life is no more valuable than the lives of too many innocent kids lost in gun violence in school shootings. Our nation is at a breaking point of either spiraling downward into our own darkest passion, or starting to see the humanity behind each and every person – Republican, Democrat, Independent, and evoke the better angels within each of us.
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I am a patriotic American citizen. I was moved to tears at my naturalization ceremony about 30 years ago, about 13 years after coming to America. I came in 1982 with a full scholarship to a private university. I left everything behind in China because I knew what I was leaving, and what I was seeking.
Starting at the age of five, during the Cultural Revolution in China, I witnessed the destructive power of stoked up political passion by one camp of people against another camp of the same ordinary people. They were all manipulated and pitted against each other by the “supreme leader”, Chairman Mao Zedong, who felt his power was threatened by his perceived political rivals.
Mao was worshipped as a deity by the Chinese people in the 60’s. At the time, China was a closed and propagandized society. When he instigated the masses to rise up and overthrow his political enemies, the turmoil did not stop there. It spread to become a nationwide common-people-against-common-people mass persecution at all levels. Tens of millions of people died at the hands of their own colleagues, betrayed by their friends, and even the closest members of their own families.
My own father, who was a college professor, was persecuted and sent to the countryside thousands of miles from Beijing where he was teaching and living, together with many intellectuals from the same college. Intellectuals were feared by Mao due to their suspected propensity for independent-thinking. My father died on that remote farm when I was nine years old.
My step brother lost his mother during the Cultural Revolution after she was persecuted, beaten, and locked up by the students of the high school where she was the principal. Those teenagers were answering Mao’s call to purge all those in power. She hung herself.
There are countless family tragedies like mine all over China during the 10 years of the national tragedy – the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. It started when the “supreme leader” manipulated the masses, inflamed their darkest passion of projecting all evil conveniently onto other people, stoked up hatred and self righteousness, encouraged them to fight, fight, and fight against an arbitrary group of people, even to the “glorious” death of “martyring” themselves.
When the beast was untamed and unleashed from each flawed human being, everyone was victimized – not only the arbitrarily persecuted, but also those “fighters” themselves. The entire nation was traumatized and the whole society was turned upside down. The entire country was at the brink of total economic collapse when Mao died in 1976. Like the guilt suffered by the surviving German soldiers who committed atrocity in World War II, those young people who blindly followed Mao’s instigation and killed others during the political upheaval faced their reckoning 10 years later.
Today, I am praying that here in America this nightmare will not take place. This was what drove me to leave China 43 years ago, to a land ruled by law, where power is checked and balanced. Where the freedom of press will not whitewash or hide truth for any political leaders. Where critical and independent thinking is a virtue, not a vice.
My younger son asked me yesterday: “Mom, it is really difficult to be friends with ____ (one of the political parties in the US.) How is it possible?” I answered: “I know, it is hard. I just choose to see their human side.” I do have close friends who belong to a different party than my own, who vote differently than me. I have even debated with them about politics. I tried not to take the stance of “I’m-right-you’re-wrong”, but with genuine curiosity about why they think about issues differently. At the end of the discussion, we both said that each of us understood the other better, and we were a little bit “smarter” by exchanging different views, even though none of us changed our political party.
We each are passionate about what we believe in, because we each care deeply about our beloved country. We can all be sometimes carried away by our frustrations, disappointments, passionate beliefs, and grave disagreements. That’s all too human.
Please see each other’s humanity first and foremost, no matter what.
Please think first before acting.
We each hold our democracy, our future, even our own sanity in our own hands, by choosing to do the right thing. #WeAreBetterAngels.
No good ever comes out of violence. Let’s engage in civility, by treating each other with respect and tolerance. Think before you act.
For the sake of our country, exercise self control.
Do not yield to anyone’s hatred and darkness, including your own. #WeAreBetterAngels.
Joanne Z. Tan is Founder & CEO of 10 Plus Brand, Inc., a brand strategist, thought leadership coach, writer, and speaker. She helps executives, board members, entrepreneurs, and organizations decode their Brand DNA, build trust in the AI age, and lead with authenticity. A former journalist, award-winning photographic artist, and immigrant from China, Joanne was trained in law and business here in the US, and had a liberal arts education before earning a law degree. Her coaching emphasizes comprehensive strategies, business modeling, thought leadership and high authority content creation, brand building, culture, teamwork, resilience. She weaves her life story into her work, guiding leaders to stand out with integrity, vision, and purpose.
© Joanne Z. Tan, 2025, all rights reserved.
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