Murder Most Foul
A few hours ago, Charlie Kirk, a young man with a family, was shot dead at a university speaking event in Utah. An ugly occurrence no matter how you cut it. I notice that video of the shooting is all over the internet. I have not seen any of this video, and will do everything in my power never to see it. I am neither a ghoul hiding behind pretenses of fellow-feeling, nor a gossip-monger given to salacious titillation, so I have no reason or inclination whatsoever to watch (read enjoy) another man’s violent death in the comfort of my own home.
Kirk was one of those young opportunists of the so-called “conservative right” who latched onto the radically anti-conservative Trump juggernaut from its earliest days — forgivably, we may say, given his extreme youth and worldly inexperience at that time — as a means of making a name and some money for himself. He achieved ever-greater success in the alt-right media world of populist authoritarianism that sometimes masquerades as a pro-capitalism movement, increasingly working under an evangelical Christian imprimatur, more or less along the lines of such self-promoting muckrakers as Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. His special focus, it seems, was working the college circuit as a youth activist — we may think of him as a Christian nationalist imitator of Ben Shapiro. He was, as I recall, one of those on the conspiracy-theory circuit who expressed uncharacteristic MAGA skepticism in the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s initial attempt to bury the Jeffrey Epstein story the moment it became awkward for him early in the summer. He also, however, did the most laughable about-face on that topic within a couple of days, after his gravy-train-cum-master Trump, who always knows how to use the Force on the weak-minded, told Kirk, “There is nothing to see here. Move along, move along.” Dutifully, Kirk repeated the mantra to his followers, and most of them, presumably, subsequently repeated it to their comrades.
All this by way of saying that from what little I know of Mr. Kirk, he came to represent, during his brief adult life, everything that is awful about the state of American politics today, about the Republican Party today, about the fate of the honorable tradition of genuine American conservatism today, about the right-wing side of the new mainstream media (the self-described “alternative” media) today, and about the psychological mechanisms, and the infinite intellectual and moral malleability, of the Trump cult today.
Having said all that, his murder is horrendous, and regardless of the ultimate identity or motives of its perpetrator, this ugly event is sure to become fodder for a feeding frenzy in the already poisonously divisive feast of American political “discourse” (scare quotes used here to delineate a concept no longer applicable without them). It will foster wild, emotional screeds from a million Trump true believers about how the Democratic Party promotes violent hatred and uncivilized activism — as though Republican Party voters in the age of Trump had any credibility levelling such accusations against anyone else. And it will cue equally irrational nonsense from the American left about how Trumpism has caused the kind of desperation that encourages outrageous acts such as Kirk’s murder — as though the very same thing could not be said about the nexus between the left’s radical transformation of American cultural norms during the Obama years and the consequent rise of the Trump cult among the desperately disaffected and socially cancelled.
If only, like the deaths of the star-crossed lovers in Romeo and Juliet, disgusting moments like this could slap everyone in America into wakeful self-awareness and renewed sanity at last. Sadly, no such outcome is likely. Quite the contrary, I suspect. Already I see that Trump himself, always a salesman with an exploitive angle on things, is “ordering” — a favorite word of his — “all American Flags throughout the United States” to be flown at half staff, an honor which he had to be shamed and coaxed into granting upon the death of war hero, U.S. senator, and one-time Republican presidential nominee John McCain. In other words, Trump’s immediate instinct is to use any public person’s death, including that of a moderately influential pro-Trump social media celebrity, to score tribal hatred points against those who oppose him. The spiral continues.
Rest in peace, Charlie Kirk.
