An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind

Charlie Kirk was a reprehensible human being. A purveyor of hatred, a propagandist, an unabashed bigot who camouflaged his nastiness with a relatively polite demeanor when speaking with opponents. He was instrumental in building up the base of the MAGA cult and a skilled manipulator.

But killing him was also reprehensible.

Lionizing him in death? Also reprehensible.

The so-called President of the United States using this murder to incite more violence against those he thinks of as his enemies? Reprehensible times 1,000.

As countless Democratic elected officials and unelected leaders have already said with the proper vehemence, there is no acceptable form of political violence. The way of a democracy is political discussion. Persuasion. Accountability and argument. Debate.

Some have been praising Charlie Kirk as one who held to this, that he debated. Even Ezra Klein, who fucking knows better, claimed Charlie Kirk did politics "the right way." He did not, of course—see opening paragraph—and he tacitly if not overtly approved of political violence even if he was not perpetrating it himself.

Charlie Kirk loved firearms as well, going so far as to state that the occasional mass shooting was an acceptable price to pay for the ability to arm oneself to the teeth. Some might think his death is karma in action.

I don't know, I'm more an expert on katras than karma, but I do know that doesn't matter in a civilized society.

What matters now is this: Charlie Kirk, a hateful man who wielded outsized influence on the so-called Republican party, has been murdered—by a young man who was an avid gamer with right-wing online influences steeped in an allegedly satirical video game wherein the player is an agent for a fascist regime—in yet another gun crime in America; the victim's political allies, including the tyrant-in-chief, immediately twisted the killing into a call for actions to be taken—unspecified, of course—against Democrats, whom he labels "the radical left" and whom he claims are "vicious and horrible" and "the worst thing" about the United States; and people who are like Charlie Kirk was in their worldview are being given permission from those political allies to commit more violence.

The hypocrisy is, of course, astonishing in its massive scope.

It is not the left, radical or otherwise, that has committed political violence on a scale not seen in decades in the last ten or so years, it is the Republicans and the Trump cult. It is not Democratic leaders calling for violence to be inflicted on political opponents, it is Republicans. I would not be at all surprised if we were to find out that the killer was himself a MAGA devotee carrying out some sort of vengeance from MAGA infighting.

Here's one statement in particular that I'd like to highlight as the epitome of weaponized psychological projection:

"The fate of millions depends upon the defeat of this wicked ideology. What ideology? The one that hates everything that is good, that is at war with family and nature, that looks upon the perfect family with bitter rage while embracing the serial criminal with tender warmth."

I fully agree with the literal statement there, as the modern Republican party embodies all of those things. Proudly. But then you realize that those words were uttered by Stephen Miller, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff and prime architect of much of the current regime's policies, projecting that nastiness onto us, the non-fascist contingent in America. 

Charlie Kirk was a despicable person. But his murder is the last thing anyone should cheer about. If not for the basic humanity of opposing murder, then for the practical reason that it will only escalate the chaos and danger we all face going about our lives under this autocratic regime.