Speaking Ill of the Dying

Charlie Kirk was pronounced dead at 4:40 PM, EST.

Right now, as I begin writing this, it's about 10:39. So officially, Kirk died about 6 hours ago.

Around that time-- perhaps even at that exact time-- I was posting a quote from Charlie Kirk on instagram:

I wrote a short caption on this post, as follows:

#prayforcharliekirk

Yes indeed. Pray for him. I wouldn’t pray for him to survive though. That would be awfully presumptuous— like putting words in God’s mouth. Instead, just pray for Charlie kirk’s body to follow the best course for humanity... If the world and its people would be better off with his survival, so be it. If we’d all be better off with his passing, then let’s just let the Lord work in mysterious ways.

#serenityprayer

God grant me the serenity to accept the fact that charlie Kirk is/ was a problem, and that being the victim of violence doesn’t redeem the downright evil and scummy shit that has come out of his mouth.

At the time I only knew Kirk had been shot. The last I heard he was reported to be in critical condition, in a hospital somewhere.

I assumed he was unconscious, but still alive. I wondered what his final thoughts were before going under. Did he feel like a maybe-soon-to-be-martyr for his stated ideals? did he have any inkling of his own mortality? And if so did he consider his own life a fair trade for our "God given right" to bear arms? Or was that notion of "Worth the cost" a tad half-assed? When he said a few lives lost to gun violence were a fair price to pay, did he include himself or did he really only mean other people's lives, like those of school children?

I knew social media would be abuzz with people expressing their condolences, offering their thoughts and prayers, and decrying political violence.

I knew, especially, that there'd be lots of liberals showering up with flowery words affirming Kirk's dignity and worth as a human person, and talking about how tragic and senseless this violence was.

Now I myself, I'm a pretty gentle guy. I can't think of many scenarios where I'd act on violence myself. I can't really even think of many scenarios where I'd hope for or condone violence.

But still, I think characterizing this violence is senseless is kinda silly. Would I trigger somebody like Kirk? No, of course not.

He made it his business to kick the hive. Am I surprised that a man who made a living off being deliberately controversial and inflammatory finally incurred the the violent wrath of an angry somebody?

Once again: no, of course not.

While the violence here seems disproportionate-- like a man was killed for simply using words, we still can't characterize it as senseless. Senseless violence implies a random brutality that cannot be understood as strategic-- violence without reason.

This was political violence, so even if we can't condone it we must admit it is quite the opposite of senseless violence.

There was some reason to this act. Charlie Kirk was targeted, assassinated, clearly. Assassinations aren't without reason.

And in all likelihood, the assassin felt noble, felt in the right. Perhaps he or she was motivated by a notion of defense-- perhaps they believed they'd be making the world a better or safer place by removing Kirk.

ANYWAY

I knew I'd be bothered by the outpouring of grief over something incorrectly termed as "senseless violence."

But also, the truth is, regardless of semantics I find the performative, saccharine liberal monsoon of condolences for hated political opponents to be insincere.

My side did the same thing for Rush Limbaugh, and that guy was a raging cunt.

It's possible to abhor violence and also find a violent death entirely unmoving-- or even grimly satisfying.

When I heard Kirk had been shot, I understood immediately that I truly didn't care whether he lived or died.

I know I'm not the only leftist who felt this way.

I wouldn't say that I wished him dead or that I wished him pain, but I really didn't feel any empathy for him whatsoever.

Now, you might think this admission means I'm some emotionless asshole who just can't be bothered to feel for another human's pain. Not so.

The reason that I felt this emotional coldness and emptiness was so striking was precisely because it's not my norm.

The truth is I spend time each and every day hurting-- sometimes even crying-- over the pain other people are suffering. Most recently, this grief was over a video I saw of first responders digging through rubble in Gaza and unearthing the body of a small boy, covered in dust-- bone dry dust over every inch of his body, except for his head, where he was covered in tacky, red mud.

At first I wasn't even sure what I was looking at, the video showed up in my feed. I recognized the harshness of the rubble, and the urgency in the voices of the rescue workers and knew they were trying to find somebody. But as they used their hands to scoop away handfuls of crumbled grey plaster, the video showed something fleshy, beneath their work.

When they pulled more debris away, I realized I was looking at the face-- the sunken cheek-- of a human buried beneath. And as they worked to free the human's limbs I realized he was a harmless child, probably around 4 years old, but thinner than a hair for malnutrition.

They pulled him free. And I started to tremble then, as the truth of this sight set in. I thought him dead, but I could see there was some hope in the movements of these rescuers-- they lifted him with a desperate sense of urgency and a heart wrenching sense of practiced, almost sacred, gentleness.

It was like watching a dance far more morbid than the totentanz-- a dance full of pleading. Like they were begging death to leave them alone, just this once. These men were moving in practiced unison, bringing the child to flat surface where they could work to revive him.

I do not like knowing that there are people in the world who know what it's like to dig a child's body out of the crumbled ruins of his home-- I do not like knowing that there are people in the world who have had to do this time and time again, with varied results.

I hate knowing that the men who rescued this boy so carefully and so gently were able to do so with such perfection precisely because they have too much practice.

They cleaned the dust and blood out of his eyes with expert speed, and when the boy stirred I realized I was sobbing.

These videos are all too common: innocent people, and especially children, subjected to the most dehumanizing violence, while desperate rescuers work in a warzone with broken infrastructure trying their very hardest to snatch these innocent people back from the jaws of annihilation.

I feel broken when I see this stuff, I feel despair.

So when I heard that Charlie Kirk was shot, I could not muster an ounce of care.

That's called empathy fatigue, it's a very real thing. If you're exposed to the suffering of others for a long enough time you begin to feel numb to and detached from newer pains.

There is a real limit to how much grief and suffering the human mind can comprehend, and to which the soul can respond.

And let's be real.... Against the collective suffering of the entire people of Gaza, Kirk's fatal gunshot wound was comparatively minor-- bordering on painless.

His ordeal was brief, he was shot in the neck at 2:10 PM, EST and pronounced dead a little over two hours later. I imagine he was unconscious, in the ICU for most of his final hours, and I suppose I'm willing to say that would be ideal. I do hope he wasn't in agony or gripped with wild fear-- the way children dying of starvation and huddling beneath attack drones certainly are.

Kirk wasn't psychologically or physically tortured. He was assassinated, cleanly.

Aside from the perceived ease of his passing against my own empathy fatigue, there was another major barrier to my ability to care about his final, losing battle: Kirk's own legacy.

Let me be clear, I have friends and family who are very conservative, who think along the lines of Kirk and who probably think him an idol or a hero. I do not hate these folks, I do not wish any harm on them, I care about them.

But these folks are regular nobodies like me. They do not have and wield platforms that reach and influence millions of impressionable, eager minds.

Kirk on the other hand founded and lead a media group, Turning Point USA, which has been criticized by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League for maintaining links to white supremacists and other alt right extremists.

I had some condemnations of Kirk, but he never heard them:

• Kirk staged debates in bad faith-- building his position with the help of a panel and researchers-- against passionate but far less experienced and far less resource-laden college students. Then, as often happened, if the college students cornered him with solid arguments he'd stoop to insults and shout-downs to claim an unwon victory. This was pathetic.
• Kirked used his platform to spread dangerous misinformation during and throughout the covid pandemic, which helped bolster the antivaxxer and antimasker movements in the US. This was irresponsible and certainly had real-world fallout: Kirk's words and platform facilitated an increased spread of illness and death due to covid. This was foolish and harmful.
• Kirk spread misinformation around the 2020 election and helped incite the violence of the Jan 6th insurrection, which has had a ripple effect of tension and violence that may continue to permeate our political conflicts for years to come. This was inflammatory and dangerous.
• Kirk has harmed progress towards racial equity and civil rights in the US. He rallied white insecurities and fragilities to perpetuate white supremacist ideologies and strengthen public opposition to fair and reasonable DEI initiatives. Kirk also railed against critical race theory, the Civil Rights Act, and Martin Luther King Jr. He has also vocally endorsed and promoted the dangerous "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory, which has been linked to the radicalization of white supremacists. This was racist and morally bankrupt.

• Kirk has destabilized public trust in our education system, spreading conspiracy theories about colleges being liberal brain washing centers, and maintaining a running list of public figures who work on school boards who are trying to "indoctrinate" the nation's youth. (This is what that looks like, yikes!)
• Kirk has fueled anti LGBTQ sentiments with divisive, homophobic rhetoric, and the proliferation of the "Gay agenda" conspiracy theory.
• Kirk condemned empathy (I shit you not: Snopes). This wasn't really all that publicly harmful, because it was frankly too stupid to sway any mentally competent listeners. But it's still a powerful wtf moment.
• Kirk strongly supported Israel, with no apparent concern for the victims of Israel's widespread crimes against humanity and in particular against children.
• Kirk has quite literally posited a nauseating perversion of social contract theory, wherein he casually shrugs over kids getting shot to death in schools, and chalks it all up as a small price to pay for our second amendment rights.... That's heartless, it's also short sighted and coldly ironic, considering Kirk's own manner of death.
• I'm sure the list goes on, I feel like I remember him saying some pretty sexist stuff, some blind nationalist/ anti-immigrant stuff, islamophobic stuff, and some standard "right vs left" political war stuff but this list is just the little bit I can recall right now.

So, yeah. Charlie Kirk wasn't a good person-- I think he was a douche. But worse than your standard, run of the mill asshole. He was your standard, run of the mill asshole with a wide reach and a powerful, influential platform-- un-tempered by any apparent concerns for empathy or social conscience.

His legacy is one of alliance with racists, sexists, homophobes, and war criminals.

He opposed education, he opposed social equity and diversity, he opposed peace and he opposed common sense gun laws. He spread what I'd describe as hate speech.

Then he wound up shot to death.

I know you're not "supposed" to speak ill of the dead, and now I suppose it's too late.

But what are we allowed to say of the dying?

I stand by what I said, with the full knowledge that I could well have sent this thought into the digital void just as Charlie Kirk was breathing his last:

#prayforcharliekirk

Yes indeed. Pray for him. I wouldn’t pray for him to survive though. That would be awfully presumptuous— like putting words in God’s mouth. Instead, just pray for Charlie kirk’s body to follow the best course for humanity... If the world and its people would be better off with his survival, so be it. If we’d all be better off with his passing, then let’s just let the Lord work in mysterious ways.

#serenityprayer

God grant me the serenity to accept the fact that charlie Kirk is/ was a problem, and that being the victim of violence doesn’t redeem the downright evil and scummy shit that has come out of his mouth.

Now that Charlie Kirk is dead, all I feel is a sense of relief. I can breathe a little easier, knowing that the people he targeted and harmed through his divisive rhetoric and his hateful platform can now live a little easier and a little freer.

Still, he was a human being. I don't think he was a good man, but his status as a once living thing leads me to hope he didn't suffer on his way out.... I'd even go so far as to wish him the grace of an easy death.

But I will not spare a single thought of mourning for his passing, because ultimately, now that he's dead I do feel relieved.

I'm allowed to admit that, because it's the truth.

His legacy remains, his platform remains, and both will continue to do harm to the marginalized and to our society as a whole, but he will no longer fuel the machine or drive it forward.

...

The last thing I'll say on the shooting death of Charlie Kirk, is I do feel terrible for his kids. It occurs to me that they very likely saw their father sniped in the neck right before their eyes. The shock, the fear, the grief that they felt and the trauma they'll carry for the rest of their lives... No child should have to endure any of that.

If you agree, then I urge you to consider the scope and magnitude of the pain endured by the orphaned children of Gaza, who saw their parents suffer similar injuries and similarly gruesome deaths.

Whatever evils Israel visits upon Palestinian children and families might as well be evils visited on Charlie Kirk's family, or my family, or yours-- to arbitrarily brutalize and terrorize a child on one corner of the globe is to dehumanize all children around the world entire.

I don't mean to overburden you.

I don't want you to experience emotional burnout and empathy fatigue, but I do want you to take a sincere moment to inform yourself about the BDS Boycotts, which aim to limit and reduce our complicity in Israel's war crimes, in part through the solidarity of consumer boycotts against companies that are guilty of supporting and profiting off Zionist violence in Gaza and elsewhere.

It might seem tacky for me to tag this on to an article about a public figure's violent death. But truly, if you abhor political violence then you MUST be swayed by the magnitude of political violence from the IDF upon a people who's very existence challenges the political movement of Zionism.

And I feel it is quite appropriate to mention the BDS boycotts here, because they relate to the one nice thing I am able to say about Charlie Kirk as regards his legacy:

Though Kirk was a staunch ideological ally and defender to Israel, he did publicly oppose a bill that would have criminalized private participation in the BDS boycotts.

I'm aware of this one instance, at least, where he did something good for our society: helped protect our private right to boycott-- even though this specific boycott opposed his stated ideals.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/conservative-republicans-shut-down-bill-that-couldve-prohibited-boycotts-of-israel/

That's not enough for me to mourn his loss, and I'll still breath easier now he's gone. But I'm glad to have one thing on the list that I can sincerely thank him for.

....

Still, there are lots of anti-BDS laws on the books, aimed to discourage government and corporate participation in the boycotts. (Anti-BDS laws)

So if you want to honor the good part of Charlie Kirk's legacy, read up on the anti-Israel boycotts he helped protect. Honor Kirk's memory, honor Palestinian children, and honor all children by withholding your private business from the corporations that are complicit in terror. Read about the BDS boycotts here: