Katty Kay
It has been a brutal week in America and I'm not the only one wondering whether the country can pull itself out of this spiral of hatred and violence.
After one of the most searing assassinations in US history, the governor of Utah pleaded for Americans to turn down the political temperature.
But hardly anyone that I've spoken to since Charlie Kirk's death thinks that will be the path the country will choose. Not anytime soon, at least.
Recent history is full of examples where America has chosen not to come together after a tragedy. It didn't happen 14 years ago after a Democratic congresswoman was shot in the head in Arizona. Nor eight years ago, when a Republican congressman was shot during baseball practice.
Americans didn't even come together in the face of a global pandemic. In fact, Covid made divisions worse.
The reason is simple, yet hard to change. The incentives that fuel American political life reward the people and platforms that turn up the heat, not those who dial tensions down.
Around the country, you're more likely to get elected to political office if you run on policies and rhetoric that appeal to your political base, rather than the political middle (it's the depressing byproduct of gerrymandering - the original sin behind America's dysfunctional, divided politics).
Equally, in the media, people who opine about politics are rewarded for being more extreme and stoking outrage — that's the way to get more eyeballs and, ultimately, more advertising dollars.
This incentive structure is what makes Utah Governor Spencer Cox something of an American exception.
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