The Morning After

 I think it’s tragic and contemptible when anyone gets murdered.  I think it’s tragic and contemptible, as well as visceral, when a public figure gets murdered.  Whoever they are.
 
I know this is not a special sensibility, I suspect most people feel this way.  Sometimes, too, I’m sure, there are deaths when some people think, “Good.  He or she deserved it.”  I don’t think that way.  My overriding wish is that no one gets murdered. Not just on general principle, but also because violence often breeds violence.
 
I thought Charlie Kirk was detestable.  But his murder was sickening and should be vigorously condemned.  To me, he was a smarmy, ignorant, hate-filled know-it-all who was very dangerous for his views, his anti-Semitism and his base of stomach-churning influence within the MAGOP.  I wrote numerous articles about his loathsome positions – most recently just three months ago in June.  I would respond bluntly to his infantile, hate-filled social media posts.  But I didn’t ever want to see him murdered.  What I wanted was to see him humiliated, repudiated and disgraced.  But not killed.  It’s awful, and I’m sorry for that.
 
The challenge is writing about it and the grace period.  How soon is “too soon”?  And what does one say that’s fully honest and not fatuous?
 
I don’t know.  But I think that when someone is a public figure who has an impact, at least to some degree, on society, then “too soon” is a question, but not the most important consideration.  Because that person's impact continues to be felt, even in the immediacy.
 
I also don’t know yet who committed the murder. There are always knee-jerk assumptions, but the only safe bet is that it was someone who, at least in some ways, was dealing with mental issues.  And importantly, not only have political murderers and mass murderers existed on both sides of the spectrum, up through current days, but when such a person acts criminally and reprehensibly, they do so only as themselves.
 
One thing I do expect is that those who were supporters will be praising his life glowingly, despite (or, often because of) all the hostility, bigotry, division, racism and anti-Semitism he brought into society.  What I don't expect is that his shooting death will cause many of those people to change their views on gun safety and call for new protections.  Oddly, I also don't expect most to simply offer “Thoughts and prayers” (the MAGOP mantra after gun deaths), since even they surely recognize that doesn’t go nearly far enough when losing someone you support and care about.
 
I do feel it important and appropriate, even this being the next day, to include something I wrote two years ago on Charlie Kirk in April, 2023, because it’s his own words -- and also has a direct impact on yesterday.
 
It was an article that came after the country's latest mass shooting, when 13 people were shot and five killed in Louisville.  This was the 132nd mass shooting in America that year, after just 100 days.  And in his online broadcast -- the very next day -- Charlie Kirk said:
 
"I think it's worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights".

And for anyone upset with this being brought up “too soon,” just one day after Charlie Kirk was shot and killed, I remind you that it was good enough for Kirk himself to make such a statement just one day after that 2023 mass shooting.  But even though it was his own words, he was wrong.  And his murder was not the worth the cost.

By the way, and for the record, "some gun deaths every single year" is now averaging over 45,000 people dead from guns.”  Every single year.
 
It was this callousness towards others that, in part, defined him.  Along with his emptiness of thought, masquerading as far-right insight.  In the article that I wrote three months ago, I quoted Kirk telling Jews that, with increased violence against them, they “should have a firearm on you at all times” and “walk around armed,” in fact Jews “should never leave your house unarmed” unless they have “a death wish.”  Lest you think this was offered in scared kindness for his fellow man, Kirk spoke further of how "My tolerance with the American Jews” is now at the level of “nothing,” adding for good measure, in case you missed his impossible-to-miss point, that "my patience has completely run out” with American Jews.  And he then predicted that because of his words, he would be called an anti-Semite.  It was a safe bet, since he had long-passed that marker.

Whatever his words and actions have been, increased violence and shootings are not on Charlie Kirk, of course. Tragically, that's been part of the world in America for much too long.  He just shouldn't be seen as a "martyr for truth and freedom" as fascist Trump tried to suggest yesterday.  Truth and freedom were never his cause, and he didn't die for them. He was a self-righteous egotist whose brand was being above everything, hating others and closed off to the well-being of those who were different from him.  Tone-deaf to them.

It is tragic and contemptible that Charlie Kirk was shot to death.  I am deeply sorry for it.

And I think, too, that it’s tragic and contemptible that Charlie Kirk ever told his followers that “some deaths” were worth it every year.  Because they're not.  Including his.