The killing of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk has created an outpouring in the media and among the political classes about how terrible and shocking it is.
Terrible? Yes. It is wrong to kill someone except under extreme circumstances like self-defense.
But shocking? No. This is America where multiple people are murdered every day because of the ease with which lethal weapons like guns can be obtained. Statistically, prominent people like Kirk are a small fraction of the public and usually surrounded by security personnel that make them hard to get to. But as small as that probability may be, there will be occasions when, despite the odds, someone well known is going to be killed.
In fact, when I get up in the morning and read the news headlines, I almost expect to see some ghastly story about people being killed. I just don’t know who the specific victims will be.
So I was not shocked by the killing of Kirk. Deadly violence is the norm in the US. Acting shocked tends to result in such events being seen as anomalies not requiring any serious response, rather than as signs of an endemic problem that calls for systemic action.
As for this specific example, the victim went out of his way to get hated.
Behold Charlie Kirk in all his glory.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/1B7hsVew8H/
More Charlie Kirk.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/v/17DMTxQjUP/
I will not feel empathy… because he would have wanted it this way!
Because ” the media and … political classes” regarded him as one of them. Getting shot is for other people. Also, because it’s right-wing propaganda gold. I don’t recall this much shock when Melissa Hortman was murdered, for example. But then, she was a Democrat, and they’re always in season these days.
These sorts of asymmetries around who is or isn’t an acceptable target of violence are one of the key ways you can tell how power is distributed in a society.
This is also why schools seem to get much more upset about kids fighting back against bullies than they do about bullying. People higher up the totem pole are allowed, even expected, to mete out violence to those lower down, but the reverse is an upsetting of the natural order of things, like water flowing uphill.
Via Daily Kos, via the Pharyngula Infinite Thread, a timely quotation from Chairman Charlie:
That’s exactly why it’s shocking. Gun violence is only supposed to affect the little people. If someone that actually matters can be killed, that’s a whole new game.
They’ll never admit that guns are a real problem, of course, but they will hire more security.
The first thing I thought of when I heard the news was Horst Wessel. If MAGA thinks it needs a martyr, they are all set now.
There’s already Ashley Babbit who’s now being given military burial honors, but I think our current politics are too complex for people to focus on a single figure. There’s too many pundits/podcasters/media whores clamoring for attention. And it’s hard to compete with the Victim/Hero in Chief.
A colleague asked me this afternoon what I thought of what had happened. My reply -- “karma’s a bitch” -- shocked him. I clarified that what had happened was of course wrong and reprehensible and all that, but that my initial comment stood, given Kirks comments about a certain amount of gun deaths being the acceptable price of the 2nd amendment.
I also observed that the shooter was considerably better at it than Thomas Crooks, who from almost exactly the same range fired several shots at Trump and only managed to hit him in the ear. This guy got a kill with his first and only shot. To quote Stephen Baldwin as Michael McManus in The Usual Suspects: “Oswald was a f**”.
As a reminder: “On June 14, 2025, Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were assassinated in their home by Vance Boelter, who also shot State Senator John Hoffman and his wife earlier that morning.”
If the right wingers had expressed sympathy and called for the end of right wing violence back in June (and earlier, for sure) I would be more sympathetic to the deranged whining going on right now from a violent right wing cabal of miserable, psychopathic thugs.
Hortman, her husband, and her dog were all shot. In the midst of grieving the loss of their parents, the barely-adult children had to make the decision to put the humanely put the grieviously injured and dying dog to sleep. Trump didn’t even bother to attend the Hortmans’ funeral.
And let’s not forget the politically-motivated attack on 86-year-old Paul Pelosi,who was minding his business at home late at night when a rightwing thug broke in to kill him and his wife. The right were downright gleeful at the news of his attack and very-serious injuries.