That’s how a civilized society is supposed to think and act. That’s what Christian teachings should tell us. Of course, that’s not what’s happening.
Many people are doing the right thing in condemning the killing and calling for an end to such violence. But some see this as a good thing, and some are blaming the left and calling for retribution, including the president and some members of Congress.
My God, when will we ever grow up? Will we ever be a nation of adults again?
The point here is to tell the truth, and the fact is two things can be true.
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- The first is violence of any kind – political or otherwise – should never be accepted. The murder of right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk is a heinous crime. It’s a tragedy. It should be neither cheered nor used as a political talking point.
- The second is this: Charlie Kirk was a piece of shit.
Let’s explore that theory.
Kirk was a racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, hateful, liar. Was he smart? Very much so? Was he successful? Absolutely. Was he charismatic? You could make an argument for that.
But he also spewed disgusting bile and ginned up hatred for various groups of people in this country in service to the corrupt, right-wing, MAGA agenda of four-time indicted, twice impeached, sexual assaulter, tax fraudster, insurrection inspirer, wannabe fascist dictator, convicted felon, Russian puppet, President Donald Trump.
Kirk was a cancer on society. He rallied his followers around his hate — the worst part being that many were young, impressionable people. He was helping to commit them to what for many will be a lifetime of misguided, unchristian, derangement. That’s not cheering his death. That’s just telling what the man was. That’s just telling the truth.
As an article on the Guardian website said: Kirk “did not shy away in his rhetoric from bigotry, intolerance, exclusion, and stereotyping.” Here are some examples of Kirk’s statements from the Guardian report:
*“If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.”
*“If you’re a WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association) pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?”
*“Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.”
*“If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence or is she there because of affirmative action?”
*“If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they’re coming out and saying it for us … You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”
*“Reject feminism. Submit to your husband Taylor (Swift). You’re not in charge.”
*“The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered.” – Responding to a question about whether he would support his 10-year-old daughter aborting a pregnancy conceived because of rape.
*“We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately.”
*“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. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”
*“America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that.”
*“The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. The love it when America becomes less white.”
*“The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.”
*“America has freedom of religion, of course, but we should be frank: large dedicated Islamic areas are a threat to America.”
*“We’ve been warning about the rise of Islam on the show, to great amount of backlash. We don’t care, that’s what we do here. And we said that Islam is not compatible with western civilization.”
*“Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.”
*“There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.”
I rest my case.
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Trump plans to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously to Kirk. He’s called for flying flags at half-mast in his honor. Stunningly, my governor – Democrat Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania – has done likewise. Some want a statue of him erected at the U.S. Capitol.
The Green Bay Packers called for a moment of silence before their game with Washington Thursday night. What did the Black players on either team think about an outspoken racist being so honored?
MSNBC fired commentator Matthew Doud for saying this about Kirk: “He’s been one of the most divisive, especially divisive young figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that is the environment we are in. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that’s the unfortunate environment we are in.”
Doud got fired for telling the truth. He got fired even after apologizing. Even after saying “I in no way intended for my comments to blame Kirk for his horrendous attack.” Another cave by the mainstream media.
The New York Times published opinion columns putting Kirk in a good light while glossing over the destructive hate he embraced. Why the rush to promote a false idol? Is it fear of being called bias when all you’d be doing is telling the truth?
The Guardian article included this quote from Kirk: “We record all of it so that we put [it] on the internet so people can see these ideas collide. When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence. That’s when civil war happens, because you start to think the other side is evil, and so they lose their humanity.”
It seems some in the media who are trying to put Kirk in the best possible light are grabbing onto this, that he pushed for debate on the issues. That’s fine, except that doesn’t erase what came out of his mouth, the demonizing, the dehumanizing, the damage it caused, and the willingness he had to see others suffer at the hands of positions and policies he supported. Don’t let the window dressing fool you.
I didn’t wish for Charlie Kirk’s death, but I’m not going to pretend he was something he wasn’t. I’m not going to lie and ignore the evil he carried with him, his willingness to call others to join him, and the damage it has and will do to my country.
Yes, Charlie Kirk was garbage. That said, he didn’t deserve to die. But what he stood for does.
