I love your humility and I see your point. It is not flesh and blood that we fight, but the evil one that "fell like lightning from the sky".
That being said, we live in two kingdoms. We are not to be of the world, but we are in it. We should not hate these poor souls that hate us, but we can hate Satan who is guiding their lunacy. There may come a time that we in the West will be called to martyrdom. But we don't have to invite it. Our biggest concern should be to bring lost people to Christ. Yet Christ did not say that earthly governments should not be allowed to punish evil. He also was very direct about demonic possession. I believe that much of what we see in the whole trans thing is totally demonic- from influence to oppression to possession. It is infectious, particularly among young women that I know. We cannot mince words, but should always keep in mind the humility that you display. I get your point that you were the "other side" not so long ago. I also was one of the least likely to have found Jesus and I do not take that for granted- ever. But we do not have to position ourselves as martyrs- if we are called for that purpose, it will find us. The fight against this evil can be seen as a rescue mission for those who can still be reached as well as self preservation.
I'm not really disagreeing with you here, I think a great many of us are struggling with what to do and where to direct the rage at both the assassination and the reaction by a significant portion of the left. At times we don't live up to our calling.
Among other things, I keep thinking of "be as wise as serpents but as innocent as doves". We have to know where the wolves are and be aware of the traps and snares of the evil one, not only for us, but for those close to us, particularly our children. And take action as appropriate (ballot box, protest, informing others of the truth, within family/friends distancing oneself) to protect the innocent, where we can. We should not hate the poor deluded souls that wish ill for us or wish to corrupt our children, but we need to take steps to prevent them from being able to follow through. Part of that means staying informed, and understanding the perils out on the internet. Since for gen Z/gen Alpha, that seems to be the primary meeting place.
Where I depart from you, Kingsnorth, et al is in the need to protect children. That requires us to speak and behave to counteract the constant speech of the many and influential who are under the rule of dark powers, so that children don't fall into it too. You can pick up the cross with one hand and take action in the world with the other. For clarity's sake: I am not advocating or approving violence.
Your posts give me hope if you came from deep within this environment. If you ever post your history somewhere, please send us a link.
Many of us that post here have lost children to one form or another of the insanity of the left. From that, a lot of bitterness and anger can be seen in the comments. That isn't right, I guess we have a long way to go in our walk with Christ (me first).
We have a daughter, now at college, that around mid adolescence got caught up in various on-line feminist craziness. Christian schools, church attendance (which stopped after a while), family prayer, limiting device time didn't help. At this point, all I have is prayer, she stopped listening to me long ago. Hook line and sinker she has swallowed the woke propaganda. At this point, aside from prayer I do whatever I can to keep communication open, in the hopes that someday she will be able to have more of an open mind. I wish I could do more than this, and would love to learn better ways of reaching gen-Z females whose minds have been captured by the propaganda.
Thank you for your kind and heartfelt words, Beth.
We're Orthodox Christians. But I do have great respect for the Catholic church - thank you for your suggestions.
God does move in mysterious ways, and I should know, because, a bit like you, I came from a very progressive background, although that was many decades ago (the 70s); raised by atheist Unitarians who were extremely disdainful of Christians (particularly Evangelical ones), I picked that prejudice up from them and had no use for Christians. Back in the day I probably would have mocked Charlie Kirk, thinking 'who cares, just another fundie'.
Until my mid thirties; everything changed, and how that unfolded has more woo in it than I'm willing to describe in a comment box.
Parents are gone now, my siblings are more or less what they always were, one an atheist, the other deep into neo-paganism and wicca. I get along OK with them (depends on which one, the pentagram wicca hoohah gives me the creeps - I'm much more comfortable with the atheist) but I have to close my ears at times and just stay out of certain conversation topics. With them too, I am watching and waiting for the right time to have a conversation. That time has not yet come though.
I so wanted to give my daughter the chance I never had until mid-adulthood, after having racked up a number of big life mistakes, following the wide path of the day, not knowing there even was a narrow path. That she could always walk with God, and not just in the second half of life. But yes there always is hope.
About the current moment, I too am worried about the over-reaction, actions based on revenge will only bring a stronger response from the other side. People with a deep attachment to a political movement tend to have very long memories, and those with money and influence will wait for the opportune time to strike back.
Destiny is insane. He has the ability to talk really fast which gives people the impression that he's smart, but nearly every opinion he expresses is evil.
Going after Destiny directly just gins the guy up. Who we could, and should, be going after are people like Piers Morgan who keeps bringing him on to his pannels.
(And by going after, I don't mean anything that crosses legal lines, but there are legal ways to put the pressure on)
I think Destiny largely has flown under the radar of most people over a certain age (the fact that Twitch streamers even exist would probably stun a lot of people over the age of 40) .
Before the Internet, Destiny would have been the village idiot somewhere. It being instantly connected to other village idiots all over the country that gives him or her a rush.
Those who shoot people will be arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced. Even people who have qualms about trusting the state with the power of execution will shed no tears for either Dylan Roof or Tyler Robinson. As for those who celebrate, I suspect that when they realize that the emperor has no clothes, that the popular acclaim is the echo of their own voices in an echo chamber of confirmation bias, that they are not Working Class Heroes nor are they on The Right Side of History, they will collapse from sheer mortification. That may be more painful to the little cretins than the perceived martyrdom of being tied to a post and whipped.
I'm not so sure of that, but time will tell. As a man of traditional socialist views (modified over the years), who spent my time on the wrong side of the tracks, not in academic ghettos building a career with a six figure income, I watched these creatures leap from one infatuation to another, all mistaking it for the prosperous, well-fed version of a war of liberation, and all very certain they were on "the right side of history." I know they have caught the ear of tone-deaf politicians, I know they talk to each other at conferences and convince each other that almost everyone thinks the way they do (punctuated by bemoaning "What's the matter with Kansas?"). But making a big deal of them is part of how they became the darling of the press. Some decades ago, the communist party boasted about how its influence reached "even this far" into various milieus, but a more insightful man observed "only this far." The trappings of "influence," but not a scintilla of real power. These cretins are not communists -- they have no discipline at all, and don't have the stamina to miss a single meal for a cause of any nature. But the share the delusion that their delightful capers have real influence on the course of the world. You're a man with military experience -- you have some idea what real power is. These people don't have it, and they need to be deflated. An occasional kick might help, but mockery is more what they deserve.
That's the whole point of their support for gun control. They want to indoctrinate children and worse but know that it will be difficult as long as millions of people own guns. If they could somehow get rid of the guns, they think they could get whatever they want.
Je suis Charlie, if you are a conservative or just have views the transmanian devils don’t like.
I guess the upside with this is that a lot of people have outed themselves. And I think it is a really good idea at this point to get as many people as possible fired and rooted out from their positions if they have cheered this on. Cut off the material support for the movement. Celebrate the murder of a person engaged in free speech and you will pay a heavy personal and economic price.
I’m not keen on witch hunts, but these days the witches out themselves and taunt people to do something about it. Trump and many of his inner circle are deeply flawed people, but at least they understand very well that the rules of the game have changed and it is no longer about genial debates on Buckley’a firing line. One can only wonder where we’d be with this if it was Mitt “Pierre Delecto” Romney in the Oval Office. I’m sure he would “seek to understand our trans community and their partners who are struggling with vicious transphobes.”
I don’t know where all of this leads. I hope that the right does not let this go and forget about it. It has to drive home the point that the war on free speech and people with the “wrong” political views is real. It also has to drive home the point for once and for all that the mainstream media will absolutely benefit over backwards to be apologists for those whose ideology they sympathize with.
As Rod always points out, apocalypse means unveiling. This past week or so has unveiled these truths in ways that cannot be forgotten by even the most moderate conservatives. Or even people who think it’s okay to speak their ideas and engage in healthy debate.
Last, this will happen again. The threshold to violence becomes lower with each time the act happens. The response cannot be simply “thoughts and prayers,” but has to be efforts by those who believe in free speech to shield and protect our thought leaders. People need to volunteer to be between speakers and their would be killers, scanning rooftops with binoculars, etc.
The left needs to get a clue . It needs to understand that there needs to be the world's thickest red line drawn between the normal left and malevolent, deranged killers. Anyone defending the assassination, even coyly or obliquely, is completely out of order, both intellectually and morally.
Yeah, though I am not so sure that the capacity for that exists on the mainstream left anymore. It is a weird situation they have put themselves in, whipping up such a frenzy over Trump and how he is literally evil incarnate. If they try to pull back and try to moderate, then they will be seen as soft on Trump by others or looks like fools. It is a serious consequence both for more mainstream liberalism, which is on life support these days anyway, as well as trying to oppose many of Trump’s policies which aren’t so great. Anyone standing up to Trump from a rational political perspective is going to be tarred by this and their point of view rejected. You can’t have checks and balances when you’ve polarized things to where people cannot have a rational conversation about them.
Well, it's hard to argue with your argument, given what has happened.
I will also add that there's something very frustrating even in the case of "good leftists". Bernie Sanders denounced the assassination but he's part of the crowd who insist on treating the trantifa as their coterie of poorly housebroken pets. They would say that trantifa has their "heart in the right place", but who occasionally do bad things due to immaturity. The right has for years drawn a line between themselves and far-right extremists (i.e. David Duke types). It might be time for the left to do that too.
She speaks like an American of Chinese descent. I see her as a third or fourth generation Chinese-American whose grandparents and parents worked hard to provide for the young woman's idiocy.
The Chinese government is smart enough not to send one of their people to a fruit-loop college like Oberlin. Oberlin is so nutty that they lost a $30 million lawsuit a few years ago because they labeled a local bakery "racist."
Trump is not evil incarnate. Trump is a mortal hazard to the Constitution of the United States of America. In 2016, a retired army officer told me, we've been offered a terrible choice for president, but I believe our democratic institutions are strong enough to restrain Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton is so adept at manipulating the levers of power, if she gets in there will be no stopping her. The first time, this officer was proved correct, just barely. The second term... we'll see.
It is a weird time, for sure. I’m not really a fan of Trump or what he is doing at this point. I think he is a mortal hazard to the Constitution in the same way Julius Caesar was to the Roman republic. But I wonder if these situations aren’t actually inevitable. The Romans could not find their way back to the good governance the Republic had experienced in the centuries prior, and I don’t know how we find a path back to more stable politics here. Or maybe it is that good governance is the exception, not the rule, a sort of political quantum state that emerges from time to time.
The Senate most certainly had become corrupt. While its hard to know the truth of how much popular support Caesar actually had, it was considerable, and may have been overwhelming. Saving the republic would require new people to populate the endangered institutions -- Graccus after all was wealthy, corrupt, owned slaves... So did Cato. A whole new leadership class, more or less clones of Cincinattus, would have been required. The myth of the Two Party System, and the laws built around it as an axiomatic assumption, are standing in the way.
No doubt Charlie Kirk could debunk your Trump being a threat to the Constitution nonsense quite easily. The only threat he is is to the Democratic Party, which is hardly the same as America.
You should know by now I have no loyalty to the Democratic Party at all, which has its own soft way of undermining the Constitution. We will never know what Charlie Kirk would have debunked -- I'm already on record on a couple of issues that I think it would have been fun to talk it over with him in person, and an assassin's bullet has deprived me of the opportunity. I didn't know much about Kirk until the headlines following his death -- only that Rod Dreher occasionally mentioned him. The picture I'm beginning to get is that he was a reasonably well-informed young man, who had an articulate way of talking. If he denied that Trump was a threat to the Constitution, I'm sure I could have gone toe to toe with him on that topic. I know the Constitution rather well.
I really don't want to get into a Trump threat to the Constitution argument, which I find ridiculous. But I do think there are millions like you, and me to some degree, who vaguely knew something of Kirk but who are now going back and watching his videos. My personal tribute to him is going to be watching as many of those videos as possible and using his arguments and style, without fear, whenever the opportunity comes.
Cardinal Dolan of NY rightly called him a modern day St. Paul.
Admittedly, many of 25% are not very invested in politics. These people are just followers for whom politics is a sideshow or a shibboleth of loyalty for their chosen tribe. These people can always be influenced and many of them could come to their senses.
"I support the current thing" is the philosophical/political rallying cry of the great majority of people. That is why I agree with Rod that we have to do everything we can to reestablish the taboo against political violence. Most of the sheeple will go along with whatever society tells them to do and to avoid doing.
Oh, it's more complicated than that. Did you see the parade of Dem governors and Senators yesterday decrying violence on social media, and in the case of Durbin in his opening remarks to the Patel hearings? Amy, Gov. Hocus Pocus of Michigan, the NutriSystem poster boy in Illinois. And sure enough the "panel" members on cable popped up to say no elected Democrat (they forgot about Omar and Jasmine) did anything but decry this horror. And when confronted with the freelance celebrations by e.g. Jennings they shuffled their papers.
What I wrote on X is that these CYA avowals of nonviolence have the moral status of "safe, legal, and rare". The speakers know it's hoo hah, their voters know it's hoo hah, and their opponents know it's hoo hah. In other words it has negative moral status, it's nihilism on stilts.
What's the justification for that? Half of Democrat voters? How does that make sense? Sorry, I haven't been able to keep up with all the comments across Rod's different posts on that.
If you count those who are being coy about it, it would reach around 25%. Going by pundits, it would be higher than 25%.
The main faulty attitude is not necessarily "Charlie Kirk deserved to die". The most common is a chummy libeling of Charlie Kirk as some kind of racist, sexist or all-purposes bigot, pinning labels on him that barely stick at all. Intelligent people, like Chris Hedges, do this, and when you look at the facts, you wonder if these people have ever done any serious research of Charlie Kirk videos. The fabric that holds these arguments together is not facts but a tribalistic "surely all of us comrades already know this is true" attitude.
The left has done this all the time for the last 10 years, doing unresearched smearing of their political enemies, knowing that their chums will nod their head without doing their own research. It just has extra consequences this time around.
I condemn everyone who pastes labels on individuals, trends, events, as a lazy substitute for marshaling facts, documenting that they are facts, and sober analysis of what those facts tell us, and what needs to be done. People aren't bad because you can label them "racist." Racism is bad because it induces people to commit crimes they otherwise would not commit. Perhaps Kirk has made some statements that could objectively be considered racist. Perhaps Kirk has advocated for some policies that could be construed as racist in actual inspiration and criteria. That would have to be laid out in detail. I don't care to put in the time, because I have my own work to do. Reacting to Charlie Kirk, or to his murder, are simply not high on my priority list.
The people you reference generally do not greet each other as "comrade," and as an old school left-winger who came of age when liberals were condemned as right-wing sell-outs, I don't care to confer the undeserved honor upon them.
There are no thick lines. Every political milieu has its deranged hangers-on. Sometimes people who seem perfectly sane spin off in a deranged direction. It would however be prudent to stop indulging in infantile celebrating of a murder. We all have people we wish were simply out of our life or out of the world. Most of us have the maturity not to actually kill them, for a variety of reasons. Humanity, there but for the grace of God go I, fear of almost certainly being caught. (Robinson was an idiot if he thought he could keep this secret until he was a very old man.) Many years ago, I ran across a feature article on how many women fantasize their husband dying in a car accident so they would be free to marry a new crush. It turned out many men interviewed would rather fantasize running a rival through with an imaginary sword most middle-aged 20th century men wouldn't know how to handle. But none of them had come close to committing murder. I remember when Dr. James Dobson speculated in public about whether it would be right to pray to God to strike Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a heart attack so George W. Bush could nominate her replacement. Whether he did, I am not privy too. But he never advocated assassinating her, he was hoping maybe God would... Didn't happen. Someone who heard him though, might have been deranged enough to think of themselves as the instrument of God. Apparently, none did. Thank God. Dobson was a curious guy -- I sometimes attended churches where his Focus on the Family guide was distributed with the bulletin. It was full of sensible advice, and a good dose of humility about how he had learned from his own mistakes. But when he stood behind a political bully pulpit, he was verbally deranged -- but he never killed. The contrast was so great I once submitted an item to the Wittenburg Door about how the real James Dobson had been kidnapped by Karl Rove on his way to have some barbecued ribs with Molly Ivins, and a look-alike was making those inane speeches. But the truth is, as Solzhenitsyn observed, that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart.
Well, I agree mostly with what you say. There are many gray areas in life.
The only thing you are missing is that it is not difficult to draw a thick red line in this case. Tyler Robinson didn't just ramble about shooting Charlie Kirk on Discord, he did it.
I think there is already a bright line rule that murder of a political rival is not justifiable homicide. Of course all rules can be breached, and remain in effect if arrest, trial and sentence proceed in an orderly manner.
It's also that Kirk was murdered for opinions, not actions.
When you add that maybe half the population agrees with at least some of what Kirk said, his murder seems like a direct threat to the average person, in a way that murder of a politician, high-ranking military figure, or CEO does not.
Yes, I think this is why Charlie Kirk’s murder seems so chilling to so many of us. Or maybe I should say, the murder and the gleeful reactions to it. There’s something indescribable about seeing that horrific video and then discovering a high school classmate, a cousin, others, savagely attacking . . . the victim.
Kirk was murdered because a love-infatuated denizen of digital dark places labeled him a hater beyond redemption. I would bet that 90 percent of the population agreed with at least some of what Kirk said. I've found points I agree with.
I read a short story years ago in which a college faculty was debating whether to require a second semester of critical thought. The whole story is various people, students, professors, maybe even secretaries, walking around with pistols in their pockets, whispering the the ears of various people when then walked as instructed, until someone else whispered in the ear of the person who kidnapped the first, until a faculty meeting erupted in mutual gunfire as one professors yelled "Second semester criticism, over here!" while others were building a barricade with chairs and tables.
What "normal left"? Scratch any leftist and you find a self-righteous egotist so convinced of their virtue that anybody who disagrees with them must be pure evil (Nazi, anyone?) and may therefore be shot on sight with a clear conscience. I am almost amused by Rod's numerous accounts of conservatives (including him), and even moderates, who discover to their shock that their liberal "friend" is actually a monster under the skin who would prefer them dead.
Eugene Debs would have been capable of delivering a respectful eulogy at Charlie Kirk's funeral. And he wasn't one of a kind, although he was very much a mom and apple pie socialist.
I agree, and I can think of a number of people on the left from that time who could have done the same. But I think things have changed. These are not your father's leftists.
Things have changed. But my point is that these are not leftists at all, however much they may flatter themselves. In classical Marxist terminology, they are right-wing petit-bourgeois deviationists of an opportunistic proto-social-fascist character. (That kind of jargon isn't good for much in defining real world problems, but it can neatly describe those who are following a vaguely "left" sentimentality into the wilderness while trying to remain comfortably equipped. They do have some distinctly fascist traits, which I think is part of what you object to. So do I.)
To me, the difficulty is how to develop a platform that appeals to wage-laborers as wage-laborers who are NOT heirs to organized crafts, also not in mass production facilities where thousands could walk out on strike in a rapid, coordinated way, and have some openings toward either traditional small business development, or the "gig economy" or solo self-employment. I don't have the answer. I know the "progressive" factions aren't it -- they are preoccupied with petty issues of non-class origin. I think what most of us share in common is a sense that large, powerful, remote, inaccessible institutions are dominating our lives, and leaving us few options for self-determination. Of course fascists can appeal to that sentiment also. Political motivation seldom falls into neat ideological categories.
No one knows where this all leads, but my sense is we're headed into a divine riposte, permitting will or ordaining will I cannot say, but a "peak event" such as a grid takedown, or a nuke attack (suitcase nuclear bomb going off in multiple strategic locations), or a global provocation that can't be ignored (like an invasion of South Korea or Taiwan). So prepare as best you can, and continue to lean on God. That strategy has never failed me, against all odds. Not that I'm invincible (or even that methodic or clever a prepper), but for whatever reasons are only known to God, I should have been dead about 10 times in my life (and I've lead a very ordinary, average life, a "glorified (yet formerly employed) housewife" some might say). Still, I find at age 72 I'm still not dead yet, against unbelievably screw ball or just stupid or unlucky near-misses. So I don't worry. St. Francis de Sales said "God forbids us to worry, but He commands us to pray." Another saint saying I like: "I worry up to midnight. After midnight, I let God worry." And another (better known): "Work as if everything depends on you, and pray as if everything depends on God." Ah, bear with me for my dear deceased Mother's words of wisdom to me. I used to ask my beloved Mother (even as a child of 10): "Mom, what is your philosophy of life?" And she replied:
I love that saying about worrying only up until midnight. Is that St. Francis de Sales too?
And I tend to agree with you about some sort of divine riposte. Yesterday, we had a thread here in the comments about the "wrath of God." I think one way to understand that, if I may put it so vulgarly, is that it is the biblical way of what we today say: FAFO. God's "wrath" is not something artificially and capriciously added onto a situation. Rather, the seeds of destruction and punishment are already sown within the evil action itself, and the "wrath of God" is simply when those seeds have grown and borne their bitter fruit. Another way of saying it that I like is "reality [or perhaps Reality] always has the last at bat."
Your last paragraph, the first sentence. Is there anybody in these boxes with, you know, connections (heh), who can get somebody to pick up the phone and have Thune greenlight Senate hearings on the whole transgender con job? The danger of depression and psychosis in the medications and hormones, the actual scientific evidence that this is simply whim? For the love of God the GOP has a solid majority in the Senate to do this, so do it.
I don’t know the ins and outs of GOP politics these days. You’d at least think the notion of “we could be next!” would convince people to start looking more carefully at this, but who knows. For what it’s worth, I worry less about militancy in the trans community, though it has definitely always been there, than I do about those who supported this murder. If nothing else, the numbers are just vastly higher for the latter.
Senate committees are not very good at that. What it would take is, first, an administration committed to following the evidence wherever it led, second, a team of qualified researchers with no ax to grind, no bias, no expectations, also willing to follow the evidence wherever it led, and third, funding for a fifty year longitudinal study, with progress reports every ten years.
this last week has been an unveiling for me in several ways.
after hearing of his death, one of my oldest friends replied ‘may he burn in Hell’ as well as other horrible statements.
as a Christian I am having a tough time with this. I love this person but am shocked at the level of hate and darkness inside him. I really don’t know what to do.
This started with the assassination of Brian Thompson. Following that horrific event, the mainstream left (Liz Warren, e.g.) immediately settled into a WCVB ("We condemn violence, BUT . . .") posture. They got away with it in that case because, hey, people on the left and right hate insurance companies, right?? Never mind that what we let them get away with was the tacit endorsement of the public execution in broad daylight on the streets of Manhattan of a husband and father who had risen from humble beginnings to do well as an insurance executive for the sole reason that he was an insurance executive!
In the case of Charlie Kirk, the left is being slightly more reticent in how they're playing the WCVB card because they know that roughly half the population believes many of the same things Charlie Kirk believed. But just because they're winking instead of saying the "BUT" out loud doesn't mean they actually have any remorse about what has happened.
You are so right. I believe some of us are ahead of the curve seeing that the War Department needs to engage the universities in a pre-emptive manner. Woke universities have become an organized conspiracy against the exercise of citizens’ constitutional liberties. Armed by illegitimate ‘ Critical Studies’ departments and led by lgbtq revolutionaries disguised as administrators, they are a 5th column for fanatical, religious, reality denying revolutionary Neo-Marxism. The monster children of 68! They are violating the Insurrection Act in all kinds of ways. An armed response by our most disciplined, hierarchical, traditional institutions well able to enforce the embodied reality of human personhood is our best line of attack. And, they deserve it.
One thing that might result from Kirk's assassination is that conservative speakers will be far less likely to have speaking engagements outside which are far harder to police.
What to do? Prepare, pray, preach, fast, repent, vote, demand we "true the vote," and ask our lawmakers to enforce the extant laws. There are enough laws on the books to take the networks of trantifa down. Do we have the political will? An article that gets into the weeds of how to find the murderous pods in the trantifa (and antifa) networks is contained in Robert W. Malone's free article "The Enemy within: Tyler Robinson is Trantifa."
An Orthodox writer on Substack (can't recall who) said our best weapons are confession, repentance, Communion, and prayer. Mainly repentance and prayer.
love your work Rod, but seriously: trigger warning please. i have avoided looking at Charlie’s murder and you dump a picture in the thread. can you take it out please?
I found it useful, though I don't want to look at the video of his being shot, which probably have all been taken down. The picture Rod shows dovetails with a youtube analysis by a prepper (and seeming gun expert) named Survival Living with a YT video entitled "Proof the FBI is Lying about Charlie Kirk Shooting". He does an in depth analysis of the video (purposely not showing the disturbing video) in which he analyzes what seems to have occured, which is that the slug seemed to have bounced off of Charlie's bullet-proof undergarmet and up into his left jugular. He discusses that there is no plausible explantion of how the gun got up into the building with the sniper Tyler Robinson or back out, since videos of Tyler's going up the stairs and jumping off the building show no gun. These and other factual anamolies are also discussed by Donald Jeffries in a free, fascinating substack entitled "Charlie Kirk: What Really Happened?"
So what do I think? I think the gunman did not act alone.
Matt Walsh has a short program today. He spends the first half going over the texts between Romeo and Romeo and pointing out anomalies; the texts do have an artificial quality. Clearly, they are meant to exonerate "my love." They seem as disingenuous as can be.
I'm surprised that Rod didn't cite the pre assassination messages between several furbabes about the "big event" they were all expecting on September 10.
Walsh thinks, and based on what Patel said yesterday it looks as though the government thinks, that this may be a much bigger thing than just those two guys.
I think it is fair. The seriousness of the consequences caused by this deeply anti-social and malevolent assassination needs to sink in, across the board. For once, I think Rod's elevated agitation is justified.
I've heard that young kids can watch and participate in Charlie's assassination through games on Roblox. Though Roblox takes them down, they keep getting put up.
The technology metamorphosed so radically between 1963 and 2025 that the video of Charlie Kirk's assassination makes frames 313 and after of the Zapruder film, in which the bullet hits JFK in the head and the viewer sees its effects, seem more illustrative than documenting.
I, too, have avoided looking at videos of Kirks murder. Like you, I was initially angry that Rod posted it without any warning. But - a couple of days prior to the shooting, videos were made available of Iryna Zarutska's murder, most of which were so heavily edited in such a way as to cause confusion. For example, one moment Iryna was visible, but the next she wasn't, so where did she go? She was viciously stabbed but I saw no blood. Only by watching an unedited video was my confusion resolved. As the murderer walked away, Iryna slumped over and fell on the floor, hidden from view by a panel in front of her. All that could be seen was her left hand reaching up, trembling, reaching out for something, anything or anyone, who might help her. Her hand weakened, then slumped and fell from view. At that moment a pool of blood seeped under the panel, streamed down and pooled on the steps of the entrance she had just climbed barely five minutes before.
Was it traumatizing to see? Absolutely. Did I regret watching it? No.
The same applies to Charlie Kirk.
The quote Dan Jones posted is why:
"Let them see what they've done."
--Jacqueline Kennedy, staying dressed in her blood-and-brain-spattered clothing, 11/22/1963.
One of the problems we face today is that we refuse to face evil. We don't want to talk about it. We don't even want to think about it. We would much rather pretend it doesn't exist - and if it does exist - we hope it just goes away. But it won't go away. In fact, it's getting worse. We've been warned.
We keep hearing about militias of white supremacists, armed to the hilt. If these actually existed, where are they? The last time they appeared they were “armed” with tiki torches.
I don’t think the lefty loons will stop until they fear swift and painful consequences. Sounds like I’m advocating a street war, I’m not. I’m advocating the fear of a population that’s not going to take it anymore. That’s not going to stand by while the Luigi’s and Tyler’s are turned into heroes. I’d like to see a way that chat rooms can be shut down. Insert a disabling virus onto the devices of kids planning chaos. They have to be stopped.
I think Tyler deserves a public hanging. Let’s see how the furries react to that.
I know what I write is a fantasy, but Mangione and Robinson deserve the William Wallace treatment. Stripped naked, dragged behind a horse cart for six miles, disembowelment, emasculation and hanging. Call me old fashioned.
I think all the "right-wing militias" got squashed after Oklahoma City. The ones you see with the tiki torches ("Patriot Front" and so on) are probably false-flag ops.
I know that makes me sound like I wear an aluminum-foil hat, but it's the best explanation for why you don't see them in situations like this.
They're not false flags, just amateurs on parade. Antifa, for all their airs, aren't much different. (The real Antifa could have shown them a thing or two, but they fought a well-populated, well-armed, well-funded SA.)
Way back in 2002, I remember reading Stephen King's "On Writing" and really enjoying it. One of the things he discusses is putting together concepts for plots. which is a really interesting topic. For example, J.K. Rowling has talked about how a large part of the Harry Potter series was born from the simple question, "What if someone were famous, but didn't know it?". I kid you not, but one of the examples King used in his book was "Is murder/assassination ever justified?" He also talks about putting some kind of unexpected twist in the premise, and I don't remember the book, but apparently one of his novels from way back when was about someone who had visions of the future and knew if this person running for political office was successful, he'd eventually become another Hitler. Knowing this, was offing the person as a preventative measure justified. (I may have some details slightly off - I read the book two decades ago.)
Over the last couple of decades, in particular, it seems like the left's answer to King's question there is "yes". I think we've kind of gone through stages of dealing with that reality in different ways; twenty years ago, I think most on our side would have still been in the mindset that when the leftists say they want to kill people, the assumption was just that it was hyperbole, people blowing off steam, etc. No, many really do want to do people who don't align with their thinking harm or death, and it's interesting to observe that it seems like there are a) more people who are intolerant of all the rejoicing over murder, period, and b) more places that are meting out punishment for people who are expressing this publicly. Is it too little too late? Probably too little to get back to where we were, but it's a good start if we're not going to just give up and die.
Re: He also talks about putting some kind of unexpected twist in the premise, and I don't remember the book, but apparently one of his novels from way back when was about someone who had visions of the future and knew if this person running for political office was successful, he'd eventually become another Hitler.
The Dead Zone. In the movie version at least the politician would start a nuclear war. That ups the ante far beyond the Hitler scenario: kill someone before they can kill billions?
I checked online and yes, the novel involves someone who will start a nuclear war-- though the guy is a total rotter, a demagogue, corrupt, not adverse to using violence. It might have been more interesting had he been basically a good guy, but would start that war through bungling and misunderstanding.
Fortunately things do not work that way with the future. The farther out complex things are the more uncertain they become. But if one were a armed guard in a bunker where Trump or Putin or Xi is about to enter the nuclear codes in the "football" to send the missiles flying, should one shoot him to stop that?
The "Dead Zone" is the book you're discussing, I think. But King's "11-22-63" had a bit more nuance, if I remember correctly: the main character is able to travel back in time and chooses to try to prevent JFK's assassination. I think that this opens up another geo-political can of worms, and the result is nuclear war....it's been years, so bear with me if I have that wrong.
There was a Star Trek (OS) in which Kirk ends up in the US in the 30s and saves the life of a missionary woman who is about to be struck by a car. And all history changes-- because this woman goes on to convert FDR and many Americans to a pacifist creed so the US does not enter WWII-- and the Nazis win. The fix is not a happy one.
That is considered the finest original Star Trek episode. "The City on the Edge of Forever." Stars Joan Collins as Captain Kirk's love interest. Edith Keeler (Joan Collins) runs a soup kitchen which somehow leads her to forming a peace movement that prevents America from entering World War Two, allowing Nazi Germany to win World War Two.
Remember, though, one of King's other key points in the crafting of the story: early on in The Dead Zone, the reader is presented a scene of the villain kicking a dog to death for fun. Only the reader ever knows this - the protagonist can never be absolutely certain he is right, even if the reader knows he is. It is a bit of grim farce to add tension to the rest of the book, and a clever writers' trick in story building.
But this is also not how the world works, of course, and that is the (forgiving the inadvertent pun) the fatal conceit of Hitler-Murder Fantasies. We can never actually know what lurks in the hearts of others. And the better versions of these stories recognize this limitation. But the shallow moral imagination of the Left on this matter is convinced it has perfect clarity of foresight, and all the smugness of being "on the right side of history", as if all is fore-ordained.
Same, actually. But I remembered him, in On Writing, specifically talking about using the dog's death as a 3rd party omniscience trick so the reader would immediately side with the protagonist.
If you KNOW that you could prevent WW III by offing a man running for office, of course that would be justified. If nobody else could see that, then you might well have to suffer the disgrace of being tried in court and in the public mind as a vicious enemy of reasoned, peaceful political competition. But the fallacy in such arguments is, we DO NOT know the future, it is only our personal speculation.
It's a lot more than generational. Generational was when parents couldn't understand why Boomer teen boys wanted to let their hair grow long.
I watched as much of the video you provided a link to as I could bear. I suppose I grasped what the woman was saying. It made me wish we had colonized Mars, and emigration from Earth, mostly of now hairless Boomers, were routine.
Are people really going to buy into this fake and gay romance story about Tyler Robinson? Maybe some loons, but I don't see it playing well in public. Or maybe I'm wrong, and our comentator Derek was right, that more than 40% of the electorate really do wish active political violence on their opponents.
Regardless, just say no to Transgenderism. No need to placate to mental illness, not anymore.
Kirn is as usual exactly on the money. I thought the cat from ABC was just spinning out of orbit (evidently he's been suspended before--a good reason to assign him a story like this), but then there was ol' Montel and this is orchestrated. I mean, they don't have their hands on all the levers but Kirn is right that of the preferred narratives Romeo and Juliet will win. Jimmy Kimmel on air Monday night saying the kid was MAGA when it as evident by Sunday to anybody who could read what had happened. My best friend, a journalist retired from a national newspaper, admitted by Sunday on X that the motivation was political. That didn't stop somebody last night (pseudonymously of course, the pussy) from commenting to me on X that the family was "hard core MAGA" and had done a bad job raising the kid. It's all over the map, but the love wins piece comes from the top.
In two comments thus far, you have used the word "pussy". Outstanding. There are times when no other word works to describe a man. That is one of a few words that have been socially "banned" that need to be resurrected.
Dreher used "piece of shit" today, and it emboldened me. Sometimes you got to cut to the chase. The vast majority of GOP Senators, led by Thune, are, yes, precisely, pussies.
Yeah - I suspect so, but it’s a long way from Romeo and Juliet to Tyler and the Furry.
A lot of older people are just learning about how mainstream furry culture is. Word is they are really upset. It’s still fringe, but not that fringe.
It might play well in secular circles, but most people aren’t purely secular. That’s a big reason why we aren’t as far gone as many places in Europe. America is still very religious compared to Europe.
I’m not 100% convinced, but I’ll noodle it around in my brain a bit more and think on it.
Something very crucial that too many people here do not get: The Left fears the Right every but as much as the Right fears the Left.
By the way what do you mean by "fake romance"? Are you saying Robinson was not romantically involved with his roommate? I was skeptical at first, but that seems rather solidly vetted at this point.
Even if the 20% number is more accurate than the 40% number, this is not your typical 80-20 issue, as in "Oh, don't worry about those fringe people. They represent only 20% of the population."
20% of the adult population of the U.S. represents over 50 million people! Just think on that a moment. 50 million of your fellow citizens (no doubt the vast, vast majority of whom are on the left) believe that killing you for the political beliefs you hold is an okay thing to do.
Well, it is a PBS poll, so you may call me skeptical of its results as between Ds and Rs.
Nevertheless, even if the poll is close to accurate, it's probably not surprising that immediately following the assassination of a conservative icon by a trans supporting asshole - the second high profile trans-motivated murder in a week (including the murder of children attending Mass the previous week) that Republicans and the right in general would be on edge and feeling the need to grab pitchforks.
My guess is that any R support for political violence at this point is something akin to a belief in self defense. If the Left feels free to shoot conservatives because of their political beliefs, don't expect the Right to simply sit still and not want to shoot back.
That’s where I land - self defense is 100% ok. It’s not about wanting to eliminate people or groups that disagree with me. I don’t think that options should be off the table, if the situation gets so extreme that you have to arm and protect yourself. Do I want that? No. I want to live in peace with my neighbors.
Do I want the option, if things go off the rails? Yes.
Situations get untenable and violent and it’s important to accept that. Our country has had a few wars on American soil, so it’s not unreasonable to believe that there might be violence in the future if we can’t work out stuff out politically. We are human beings and humans fight violently sometimes. That’s why it’s so important for civil society to keep the fringes in check.
You are right that is about a belief in self defense (this is true for Ds as well). Anybody that looks at the media (and social media) directed at partisans for either side can see it is filled with the message that the other side is completely unreasonable, bent on total victory, and "not like us".
Well, I've been saying for years, only about 25 percent of the population really LIKE Donald Trump, the rest are just scared of what the Democrats offer. Its probably up to 35-40 percent now, but some of that would peel away if there were a sane and sensible alternative on offer. The Dems aren't it.
The "fake and gay" comment was a reference to what has been euphemistically described as performative LGBT activism. Though in this situation, the "fake and gay" is being directed at those who would use Robinson's homosexual romance as some weak reason to excuse his assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Though it does seem my original intuition (that only around 20% of people wish for political violence) was reasonable; I think there are enough normal people who are waking up and denouncing the vicious response to Kirk's murder.
"The Left fears the Right every bit as much as the Right fears the Left" only because the Left operates under the childish delusion that no one should have a worldview or even an opinion different from their own. And God forbid such a person EXPRESS a differing worldview or opinion. When you have convinced yourself that words in the form of a different opinion are "violence" and that refusing to go along with someone's gender delusion is "genocide," then yes, I guess you fear the other side. But that doesn't mean your fear has any basis in reality.
The Left’s fears are demonstrably on far shakier ground than those on the Right.
Broadly, the Left historically has aimed for internal security (economic, health) and the Right for liberty (economic, private arrangements of many kinds).
The party whose prime concern is security will inevitably be more paranoid and subject to more fantasies. That’s why we laugh today at the John Birch Society or at Alex Jones and why spoofs like the Weekly World News were so funny.
Consider the possibility that the Kirk killer chose to plan his murder in such a public way precisely to elicit the gross online celebration we’ve been seeing. He chose a crowded public venue, at a university, with plenty of cameras (he also didn’t care about traumatizing the thousands of people or risking injuring/killing any bystanders by attempting an uncertain relatively long-distance shot).
He wanted everyone to see his - whether in person or on social media - and he wanted exactly this reaction.
I simply find it unbelievable that anyone on the left would choose *this* hill to die on.
Anyone doing this could well be malevolent, as Rod claims. But what they also are, is unbelievably stupid, self-righteous and in the process of self-destruction.
I suspect more and more we’re going to see a repeat of the 70’s soon, with bombings and assassinations and riots becoming commonplace again. I mean we’re already in the middle of something like that.
That, of course, ushered in a generation of conservative dominance over the Presidency from Nixon to George HW Bush, with multiple landslide wins along the way.
I read a piece that observed that this is a pattern with the left - they whip themselves into a frenzy of utopian hopes and dreams, and then when their ideas fail and are rejected, they turn violent in their thwarted rage. The 70’s followed the Utopianism of the 60’s, with Nixon’s wins driving home that there really was a Silent Majority against what the left wanted. It seems to me that Trump’s reelection, a much clearer repudiation than the squeaker in 2016, may have triggered a similar psychological break after two decades of belief in inevitable “progress” and the defeat of the hated right due to demographic change.
Nixon was pretty mainstream, even a bit liberal, and Reagan wasn't that far to the Right as depicted. Today's Right is too far from the center (ditto the Left of course!). So no, there will be no landslides to come since today's political strategy is all about playing to the base.
Reagan was strongly conservative but he was a realist. Getting half of what you want was better than getting zero. Reagan governed in an era when there was still liberal and moderate Republicans and conservative and moderate Democrats. That's all dead now.
Predicting elections this far out is of course a mug’s game, and I didn’t really mean to imply that we are about to see Nixon and Reagan level landslides.
It’s worth noting though that Trump can’t run again, so we don’t really know what the character of the next Republican standard bearer is going to be like. We also don’t know what the next two years holds.
Re: "there will be no landslides to come since today's political strategy is all about playing to the base." I think this too, but doubt that it would altogether hold true if there is another 9/11 or other peak event of the type Anne Heath wrote about a few hours ago. E.g., 2004 when Dubya romped to re-election and the GOP strengthened control of both chambers.
Bush won a solid victory in 2004, but it was a long way from a landslide. If 70,000 votes in Ohio had been different we would have had President Kerry.
Two years later the "permanent GOP majority" was proved to be about as permanent as a late spring snowstorm.
Point well taken. What we used to call a landslide surely will never happen among such a polarized electorate; what would now be called a landslide could happen but would require unusual events to fuel it. Better?
Obama's win in 2008 was a mini-landslide, 53-46 percent over McCain. The Republicans were discredited by 2008 with the fiascos in the Middle East and the Wall Street meltdown. McCain was a very flawed candidate, hated by a large minority of his own party.
Obama was very much an accidental success. Yes, he was being readied for prime time in 2004, but his ascendancy was no sure thing. The accidents of the 2008 meltdown and Iraq War fiasco were not preordained. Had neither been as sharply recent, neither would have had as much impact.
The Republicans are recapturing the center. It’s there for the picking if the Democrats keep downplaying murder. Especially murder readily viewable online with blood splashing out of jugulars or running in red rivulets along the floor of transit cars.
I can envision ads that could keep the presidency out of Democrats’ hands for the next generation, until they find their next Grover Cleveland.
Re: I suspect more and more we’re going to see a repeat of the 70’s soon, with bombings and assassinations and riots becoming commonplace again. I mean we’re already in the middle of something like that.
Trying to come up with modern-day analogs of the groups back then. I think it's safe to say today's Antifa (or Trantifa if you like) are the Weathermen. Who are the Black Panthers? BLM doesn't really map. Any other ideas/groups?
The fantasies of trantifa aside, what I have seen in the last 10 years is that the mainstream left is only effective at destroying itself, while strengthening the right.
At least, that is what all the trends until now show.
Trump has won twice and almost won in 2020 because the mainstream left is mostly capable only of own goals, shooting itself in the foot and aggravating people outside of their immediate social environment.
If the left in America was competent, the right would not be resurgent and Trump would not be president. Trump is a direct outcome of the mistakes, neglect and idiocy of the mainstream left.
I think you’re right. The electoral cycle has favored the Left, but barely. Obama’s terms obscured what I think is the true character of the American electorate, which has operated in good faith and has been tolerant to a fault. That gay marriage was opposed by majorities of voters in 2008, but favored after Obergefell speaks largely to respect for the Supreme Court rather than to the issue itself. The Court’s reputation itself lent respectability to gay marriage.
That’s political tolerance in action. Trump’s second election after his lawfare persecution is also a sign of respect for the true rule of law. Voters understood that Trump is only a felon in the eyes of fundamentally dishonest people.
When the Left militates against our institutions as such, it loses. But it doesn’t recognize the damage it does to itself because the voters only get the chance to express themselves every four years (in reality—the midterms are about party strength).
This is a reasonable sentiment, but the hard left aren't reasonable. They choose their flag-bearers and signature events not for their 'winsomeness' (to borrow a seeker-sensitive term much beloved in recent years in Christian circles) but precisely for their viciousness and ability to shock.
Think about BLM's 'heroes', for example: Trayvon, Michael Brown, and, above all, of course, George Floyd: all unsympathetic, antisocial, and morally-dubious to outright-lawless.
And then consider the Luigi/Brian Thompson assassination. Yes, Luigi is cute, but the manner in which he did his killing would, in a saner culture, have been considered repulsive: he sneaked up behind his victim in the dark and shot him in the back. What a brave hero!
The point is, the Woke believe they have the God-like power to shape and use these killers and their filthy works, to redeem not just the killers themselves, but the rest of us as well. They believe their inherent goodness and wisdom can reshape human nature and bring about their elusive utopia. They believe they are Saviors.
They are certainly self-righteous; we'll all agree on that. But where we can see their glaring stupidity and self-destruction, they see only selfless virtue and their own saving power.
That's why this isn't going to end well without divine help.
Their inner core is nihilism. They have a real absence of meaning inside of them and their only flicker of purpose is signing onto some kind of latter-day LGBT marxism (which is their replacement for religion).
This ideology keeps them going by filling the meaning hole, but it is an ideology that is fragile, since it is constantly challenged by reality on all fronts. It also renders the person incapable of being effective or successful in the real world (because success = making peace with the capitalist system). This makes the left-wing nihilist even worse-off because he sees himself being a loser and an outcast in real-life terms.
All of this, compounded over years, turns the soul of the left-wing nihilist into a shrivelled, crumpled-up piece of coal. In many cases, the person desires violence or destruction, but simultaneously believes himself as good (since leftists are definitionally the "good people" in his ideology). Hence he is capable of inhumanity against anyone he thinks is the enemy.
To be clear, this applies specifically to terminally online Marxists (like Tyler Robinson), not mainstream Democrats. If the person seems reasonably happy, is married and is successful in his job, it doesn't apply. If he is obviously troubled, single and terminally online, it does.
As for mainstream politics, I think there are two kinds: 1) practical people who believe that, in general, greater weight must be applied to policies favored by one side or the other, but that both sides have good reasons for their positions or 2) patient people who long for Utopia but who will work within the system assiduously to achieve incremental change, while never conceding any real legitimacy to the goals or ideas of their opponents.
Outside of this, we have the radicals who want fundamental change now or in the near future, and who view all institutions as impediments to achieving fundamental change.
That's true, but don't forget the silent majority - politically luke-warm people who only have political views to fit in with their chosen tribe and put the majority of their emotional energy and time into other pursuits.
For outright politicians, there is also a third category in addition to your two - the amoral careerist, who like a chameleon, fits his spots to match his surroundings. Cf. Gavin Newsom
I wonder if these are stable categories over decades, though? When I was younger, I naively assumed all politics was practical. Yet, I’ve seen how the practical people are undermined over the long term by the patient Utopians, who never intended to abide by the agreements reached by practical people. At some point, I think the practical ones must either concede defeat, adopt the tactics of the patient Utopians, or join the radicals.
What I've heard is that Robinson's assassination of Charlie Kirk is considered NVE (Nihilistic Violent Extremism). Accurate characterization.
Make no mistake, these folks are so empty that they are easily inhabited by evil. (as per Rod's comments in other posts).
OTOH, there are some very positive outcomes--many returning to church and faith. FANTASTIC news and evidence of the working of the Holy Spirit.
From my perspective, it is also helpful that a number of folks are switching their allegiance from Dem to Republican. Both FL and PA report significant spikes (double or higher) in R registration.
If any Dem would speak plainly, without "both sides-ism", and acknowledge that the rhetoric of calling opponents fascists and Nazis was WRONG, and take responsibility for injecting this evil into our country--well that would be a game changer. No excuses, only repentance. Obama's comments today don't qualify. Sen Fetterman comes closest.
Rod, Have you ever read "People of the Lie" by M. Scott Peck? I haven't gone back to it in a long time as I find it (emotionally) a hard read, but the basic thesis is that people commit evil behavior to maintain the lie, that maintaining the lie REQUIRES evil to suppress the truth, and this happens because doing evil to maintain the lie is more psychologically acceptable than facing the truth. When I first read it, I was immediately convicted that this was basically correct and was profoundly affected. It has led me to try to accept all uncomfortable truths about myself.
“The People of the Lie” is a book everyone should read. Doing evil to maintain a lie is exactly what is going on with regard to the Ukraine War. The big lie, of course, is that Putin is a second Hitler, hell bent in conquering Europe. So the killing must go on because of feigned paranoia about Putin and Russia.
A friend of mine worked for a while as a law clerk for a public defender’s office in CA. He had occasion to sit in on client meetings with a notorious serial killer, who was later convicted. He told me that the most chilling thing about this was that despite the raft of circumstantial, forensic, and eyewitness evidence (one of his victims survived) tying the defendant to the crimes, the killer maintained his innocence and had a lie to explain away every damning piece of evidence. He lied to cover for his lies, and showed absolutely no remorse.
With the amount of Cluster B diagnoses floating around in the unhinged Left, I’m not at all surprised at what goes on to maintain the lies.
Just to be clear: he's a student, not a don. (The Oxford Union is a private student debating club associated with the university but formally not part of it.)
OK, go ahead and hate on me, but I do think it's important to remember that Sean Hannity and Mark Levin, e.g., were still pushing WMD when it was evident to everybody else that Iraq '03 had been a put up job, a murderous, illegal, and mostly stupid put-up job. I. heard Hannity encourage one of his knuckle-dragging callers in this delusion as late as 2007 and almost drove the car off the road in my rage.
That said, this is one of your best pieces and I shared it on X.
I love your humility and I see your point. It is not flesh and blood that we fight, but the evil one that "fell like lightning from the sky".
That being said, we live in two kingdoms. We are not to be of the world, but we are in it. We should not hate these poor souls that hate us, but we can hate Satan who is guiding their lunacy. There may come a time that we in the West will be called to martyrdom. But we don't have to invite it. Our biggest concern should be to bring lost people to Christ. Yet Christ did not say that earthly governments should not be allowed to punish evil. He also was very direct about demonic possession. I believe that much of what we see in the whole trans thing is totally demonic- from influence to oppression to possession. It is infectious, particularly among young women that I know. We cannot mince words, but should always keep in mind the humility that you display. I get your point that you were the "other side" not so long ago. I also was one of the least likely to have found Jesus and I do not take that for granted- ever. But we do not have to position ourselves as martyrs- if we are called for that purpose, it will find us. The fight against this evil can be seen as a rescue mission for those who can still be reached as well as self preservation.
I'm not really disagreeing with you here, I think a great many of us are struggling with what to do and where to direct the rage at both the assassination and the reaction by a significant portion of the left. At times we don't live up to our calling.
Among other things, I keep thinking of "be as wise as serpents but as innocent as doves". We have to know where the wolves are and be aware of the traps and snares of the evil one, not only for us, but for those close to us, particularly our children. And take action as appropriate (ballot box, protest, informing others of the truth, within family/friends distancing oneself) to protect the innocent, where we can. We should not hate the poor deluded souls that wish ill for us or wish to corrupt our children, but we need to take steps to prevent them from being able to follow through. Part of that means staying informed, and understanding the perils out on the internet. Since for gen Z/gen Alpha, that seems to be the primary meeting place.
Where I depart from you, Kingsnorth, et al is in the need to protect children. That requires us to speak and behave to counteract the constant speech of the many and influential who are under the rule of dark powers, so that children don't fall into it too. You can pick up the cross with one hand and take action in the world with the other. For clarity's sake: I am not advocating or approving violence.
Your posts give me hope if you came from deep within this environment. If you ever post your history somewhere, please send us a link.
Many of us that post here have lost children to one form or another of the insanity of the left. From that, a lot of bitterness and anger can be seen in the comments. That isn't right, I guess we have a long way to go in our walk with Christ (me first).
We have a daughter, now at college, that around mid adolescence got caught up in various on-line feminist craziness. Christian schools, church attendance (which stopped after a while), family prayer, limiting device time didn't help. At this point, all I have is prayer, she stopped listening to me long ago. Hook line and sinker she has swallowed the woke propaganda. At this point, aside from prayer I do whatever I can to keep communication open, in the hopes that someday she will be able to have more of an open mind. I wish I could do more than this, and would love to learn better ways of reaching gen-Z females whose minds have been captured by the propaganda.
Thank you for your kind and heartfelt words, Beth.
We're Orthodox Christians. But I do have great respect for the Catholic church - thank you for your suggestions.
God does move in mysterious ways, and I should know, because, a bit like you, I came from a very progressive background, although that was many decades ago (the 70s); raised by atheist Unitarians who were extremely disdainful of Christians (particularly Evangelical ones), I picked that prejudice up from them and had no use for Christians. Back in the day I probably would have mocked Charlie Kirk, thinking 'who cares, just another fundie'.
Until my mid thirties; everything changed, and how that unfolded has more woo in it than I'm willing to describe in a comment box.
Parents are gone now, my siblings are more or less what they always were, one an atheist, the other deep into neo-paganism and wicca. I get along OK with them (depends on which one, the pentagram wicca hoohah gives me the creeps - I'm much more comfortable with the atheist) but I have to close my ears at times and just stay out of certain conversation topics. With them too, I am watching and waiting for the right time to have a conversation. That time has not yet come though.
I so wanted to give my daughter the chance I never had until mid-adulthood, after having racked up a number of big life mistakes, following the wide path of the day, not knowing there even was a narrow path. That she could always walk with God, and not just in the second half of life. But yes there always is hope.
About the current moment, I too am worried about the over-reaction, actions based on revenge will only bring a stronger response from the other side. People with a deep attachment to a political movement tend to have very long memories, and those with money and influence will wait for the opportune time to strike back.
I am intrigued by this.
Destiny is insane. He has the ability to talk really fast which gives people the impression that he's smart, but nearly every opinion he expresses is evil.
Going after Destiny directly just gins the guy up. Who we could, and should, be going after are people like Piers Morgan who keeps bringing him on to his pannels.
(And by going after, I don't mean anything that crosses legal lines, but there are legal ways to put the pressure on)
I think Destiny largely has flown under the radar of most people over a certain age (the fact that Twitch streamers even exist would probably stun a lot of people over the age of 40) .
I don’t like the presumption involved in using only one name for oneself.
taking massive doses of Adderall gives folks the impression that he is smart.
Before the Internet, Destiny would have been the village idiot somewhere. It being instantly connected to other village idiots all over the country that gives him or her a rush.
Those who shoot people will be arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced. Even people who have qualms about trusting the state with the power of execution will shed no tears for either Dylan Roof or Tyler Robinson. As for those who celebrate, I suspect that when they realize that the emperor has no clothes, that the popular acclaim is the echo of their own voices in an echo chamber of confirmation bias, that they are not Working Class Heroes nor are they on The Right Side of History, they will collapse from sheer mortification. That may be more painful to the little cretins than the perceived martyrdom of being tied to a post and whipped.
I'm not so sure of that, but time will tell. As a man of traditional socialist views (modified over the years), who spent my time on the wrong side of the tracks, not in academic ghettos building a career with a six figure income, I watched these creatures leap from one infatuation to another, all mistaking it for the prosperous, well-fed version of a war of liberation, and all very certain they were on "the right side of history." I know they have caught the ear of tone-deaf politicians, I know they talk to each other at conferences and convince each other that almost everyone thinks the way they do (punctuated by bemoaning "What's the matter with Kansas?"). But making a big deal of them is part of how they became the darling of the press. Some decades ago, the communist party boasted about how its influence reached "even this far" into various milieus, but a more insightful man observed "only this far." The trappings of "influence," but not a scintilla of real power. These cretins are not communists -- they have no discipline at all, and don't have the stamina to miss a single meal for a cause of any nature. But the share the delusion that their delightful capers have real influence on the course of the world. You're a man with military experience -- you have some idea what real power is. These people don't have it, and they need to be deflated. An occasional kick might help, but mockery is more what they deserve.
The craziest thing is the fact that destiny still has his ego matters after his sex tape released.
Sex tape with another dude btw...really wish I had eye bleach after that got posted in a gaming forum
And he also has a kid who hates his guts. Not really surprising since he'd leave his wife and son to go do meth and hook up with guys.
Anyway, no surprise that this pos is happy about the kirk murder
That's the whole point of their support for gun control. They want to indoctrinate children and worse but know that it will be difficult as long as millions of people own guns. If they could somehow get rid of the guns, they think they could get whatever they want.
Destiny. Is she/he a stripper?
Je suis Charlie, if you are a conservative or just have views the transmanian devils don’t like.
I guess the upside with this is that a lot of people have outed themselves. And I think it is a really good idea at this point to get as many people as possible fired and rooted out from their positions if they have cheered this on. Cut off the material support for the movement. Celebrate the murder of a person engaged in free speech and you will pay a heavy personal and economic price.
I’m not keen on witch hunts, but these days the witches out themselves and taunt people to do something about it. Trump and many of his inner circle are deeply flawed people, but at least they understand very well that the rules of the game have changed and it is no longer about genial debates on Buckley’a firing line. One can only wonder where we’d be with this if it was Mitt “Pierre Delecto” Romney in the Oval Office. I’m sure he would “seek to understand our trans community and their partners who are struggling with vicious transphobes.”
I don’t know where all of this leads. I hope that the right does not let this go and forget about it. It has to drive home the point that the war on free speech and people with the “wrong” political views is real. It also has to drive home the point for once and for all that the mainstream media will absolutely benefit over backwards to be apologists for those whose ideology they sympathize with.
As Rod always points out, apocalypse means unveiling. This past week or so has unveiled these truths in ways that cannot be forgotten by even the most moderate conservatives. Or even people who think it’s okay to speak their ideas and engage in healthy debate.
Last, this will happen again. The threshold to violence becomes lower with each time the act happens. The response cannot be simply “thoughts and prayers,” but has to be efforts by those who believe in free speech to shield and protect our thought leaders. People need to volunteer to be between speakers and their would be killers, scanning rooftops with binoculars, etc.
The left needs to get a clue . It needs to understand that there needs to be the world's thickest red line drawn between the normal left and malevolent, deranged killers. Anyone defending the assassination, even coyly or obliquely, is completely out of order, both intellectually and morally.
Yeah, though I am not so sure that the capacity for that exists on the mainstream left anymore. It is a weird situation they have put themselves in, whipping up such a frenzy over Trump and how he is literally evil incarnate. If they try to pull back and try to moderate, then they will be seen as soft on Trump by others or looks like fools. It is a serious consequence both for more mainstream liberalism, which is on life support these days anyway, as well as trying to oppose many of Trump’s policies which aren’t so great. Anyone standing up to Trump from a rational political perspective is going to be tarred by this and their point of view rejected. You can’t have checks and balances when you’ve polarized things to where people cannot have a rational conversation about them.
Well, it's hard to argue with your argument, given what has happened.
I will also add that there's something very frustrating even in the case of "good leftists". Bernie Sanders denounced the assassination but he's part of the crowd who insist on treating the trantifa as their coterie of poorly housebroken pets. They would say that trantifa has their "heart in the right place", but who occasionally do bad things due to immaturity. The right has for years drawn a line between themselves and far-right extremists (i.e. David Duke types). It might be time for the left to do that too.
Thank you! Your quip about Sanders and his ilk “treating the transtifa as their coterie of poorly housebroken pets” is hilariously accurate!
Are they afraid, do you think, of what they've created?
Also, "transmanian devils"?!
Is the woman from Oberlin an American or a Chinese national?
She speaks like an American of Chinese descent. I see her as a third or fourth generation Chinese-American whose grandparents and parents worked hard to provide for the young woman's idiocy.
All right. One wonders how much of this is being seeded by foreign students.
The Chinese government is smart enough not to send one of their people to a fruit-loop college like Oberlin. Oberlin is so nutty that they lost a $30 million lawsuit a few years ago because they labeled a local bakery "racist."
Trump is not evil incarnate. Trump is a mortal hazard to the Constitution of the United States of America. In 2016, a retired army officer told me, we've been offered a terrible choice for president, but I believe our democratic institutions are strong enough to restrain Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton is so adept at manipulating the levers of power, if she gets in there will be no stopping her. The first time, this officer was proved correct, just barely. The second term... we'll see.
It is a weird time, for sure. I’m not really a fan of Trump or what he is doing at this point. I think he is a mortal hazard to the Constitution in the same way Julius Caesar was to the Roman republic. But I wonder if these situations aren’t actually inevitable. The Romans could not find their way back to the good governance the Republic had experienced in the centuries prior, and I don’t know how we find a path back to more stable politics here. Or maybe it is that good governance is the exception, not the rule, a sort of political quantum state that emerges from time to time.
The Senate most certainly had become corrupt. While its hard to know the truth of how much popular support Caesar actually had, it was considerable, and may have been overwhelming. Saving the republic would require new people to populate the endangered institutions -- Graccus after all was wealthy, corrupt, owned slaves... So did Cato. A whole new leadership class, more or less clones of Cincinattus, would have been required. The myth of the Two Party System, and the laws built around it as an axiomatic assumption, are standing in the way.
No doubt Charlie Kirk could debunk your Trump being a threat to the Constitution nonsense quite easily. The only threat he is is to the Democratic Party, which is hardly the same as America.
You should know by now I have no loyalty to the Democratic Party at all, which has its own soft way of undermining the Constitution. We will never know what Charlie Kirk would have debunked -- I'm already on record on a couple of issues that I think it would have been fun to talk it over with him in person, and an assassin's bullet has deprived me of the opportunity. I didn't know much about Kirk until the headlines following his death -- only that Rod Dreher occasionally mentioned him. The picture I'm beginning to get is that he was a reasonably well-informed young man, who had an articulate way of talking. If he denied that Trump was a threat to the Constitution, I'm sure I could have gone toe to toe with him on that topic. I know the Constitution rather well.
I really don't want to get into a Trump threat to the Constitution argument, which I find ridiculous. But I do think there are millions like you, and me to some degree, who vaguely knew something of Kirk but who are now going back and watching his videos. My personal tribute to him is going to be watching as many of those videos as possible and using his arguments and style, without fear, whenever the opportunity comes.
Cardinal Dolan of NY rightly called him a modern day St. Paul.
"You should know by now I". You flatter yourself if you think I am some sort of student of your comments here. Are you one of mine?
"Anyone defending the assassination, even coyly or obliquely, is completely out of order, both intellectually and morally."
From the numbers, that's at least 25% of the voting population, and probably closer to 30%.
Sort of a scary thought as that is more than enough for a “critical mass.”
I agree. Revolutions take place with fewer adherents.
Just because someone freely tweets or posts on a blog does not mean they would stir from their home to man the barricades.
25% or not, it's definitely a lot of them.
Admittedly, many of 25% are not very invested in politics. These people are just followers for whom politics is a sideshow or a shibboleth of loyalty for their chosen tribe. These people can always be influenced and many of them could come to their senses.
"I support the current thing" is the philosophical/political rallying cry of the great majority of people. That is why I agree with Rod that we have to do everything we can to reestablish the taboo against political violence. Most of the sheeple will go along with whatever society tells them to do and to avoid doing.
Oh, it's more complicated than that. Did you see the parade of Dem governors and Senators yesterday decrying violence on social media, and in the case of Durbin in his opening remarks to the Patel hearings? Amy, Gov. Hocus Pocus of Michigan, the NutriSystem poster boy in Illinois. And sure enough the "panel" members on cable popped up to say no elected Democrat (they forgot about Omar and Jasmine) did anything but decry this horror. And when confronted with the freelance celebrations by e.g. Jennings they shuffled their papers.
What I wrote on X is that these CYA avowals of nonviolence have the moral status of "safe, legal, and rare". The speakers know it's hoo hah, their voters know it's hoo hah, and their opponents know it's hoo hah. In other words it has negative moral status, it's nihilism on stilts.
Those who begin a harangue with "Nobody is saying..." are almost always wrong, because there is always one, or two, or three.
Right now, "society" is the Trump administration.
Powerless posturing.
Chuck Schumer is wise enough to shut his ugly trap but I bet he's secretly gleeful over Kirk's death.
Maybe. You got to hand it to Omar and Jasmine for their candor.
Where are you getting that number from?
Dividing 48 in half.
What's the justification for that? Half of Democrat voters? How does that make sense? Sorry, I haven't been able to keep up with all the comments across Rod's different posts on that.
Those are percentages of active online blabbermouths. Percentages on the street are quite different.
If you count those who are being coy about it, it would reach around 25%. Going by pundits, it would be higher than 25%.
The main faulty attitude is not necessarily "Charlie Kirk deserved to die". The most common is a chummy libeling of Charlie Kirk as some kind of racist, sexist or all-purposes bigot, pinning labels on him that barely stick at all. Intelligent people, like Chris Hedges, do this, and when you look at the facts, you wonder if these people have ever done any serious research of Charlie Kirk videos. The fabric that holds these arguments together is not facts but a tribalistic "surely all of us comrades already know this is true" attitude.
The left has done this all the time for the last 10 years, doing unresearched smearing of their political enemies, knowing that their chums will nod their head without doing their own research. It just has extra consequences this time around.
I condemn everyone who pastes labels on individuals, trends, events, as a lazy substitute for marshaling facts, documenting that they are facts, and sober analysis of what those facts tell us, and what needs to be done. People aren't bad because you can label them "racist." Racism is bad because it induces people to commit crimes they otherwise would not commit. Perhaps Kirk has made some statements that could objectively be considered racist. Perhaps Kirk has advocated for some policies that could be construed as racist in actual inspiration and criteria. That would have to be laid out in detail. I don't care to put in the time, because I have my own work to do. Reacting to Charlie Kirk, or to his murder, are simply not high on my priority list.
The people you reference generally do not greet each other as "comrade," and as an old school left-winger who came of age when liberals were condemned as right-wing sell-outs, I don't care to confer the undeserved honor upon them.
If all the leftists were like Charlie Rosenberg, nobody would have a problem with them.
There are no thick lines. Every political milieu has its deranged hangers-on. Sometimes people who seem perfectly sane spin off in a deranged direction. It would however be prudent to stop indulging in infantile celebrating of a murder. We all have people we wish were simply out of our life or out of the world. Most of us have the maturity not to actually kill them, for a variety of reasons. Humanity, there but for the grace of God go I, fear of almost certainly being caught. (Robinson was an idiot if he thought he could keep this secret until he was a very old man.) Many years ago, I ran across a feature article on how many women fantasize their husband dying in a car accident so they would be free to marry a new crush. It turned out many men interviewed would rather fantasize running a rival through with an imaginary sword most middle-aged 20th century men wouldn't know how to handle. But none of them had come close to committing murder. I remember when Dr. James Dobson speculated in public about whether it would be right to pray to God to strike Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a heart attack so George W. Bush could nominate her replacement. Whether he did, I am not privy too. But he never advocated assassinating her, he was hoping maybe God would... Didn't happen. Someone who heard him though, might have been deranged enough to think of themselves as the instrument of God. Apparently, none did. Thank God. Dobson was a curious guy -- I sometimes attended churches where his Focus on the Family guide was distributed with the bulletin. It was full of sensible advice, and a good dose of humility about how he had learned from his own mistakes. But when he stood behind a political bully pulpit, he was verbally deranged -- but he never killed. The contrast was so great I once submitted an item to the Wittenburg Door about how the real James Dobson had been kidnapped by Karl Rove on his way to have some barbecued ribs with Molly Ivins, and a look-alike was making those inane speeches. But the truth is, as Solzhenitsyn observed, that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart.
Well, I agree mostly with what you say. There are many gray areas in life.
The only thing you are missing is that it is not difficult to draw a thick red line in this case. Tyler Robinson didn't just ramble about shooting Charlie Kirk on Discord, he did it.
I think there is already a bright line rule that murder of a political rival is not justifiable homicide. Of course all rules can be breached, and remain in effect if arrest, trial and sentence proceed in an orderly manner.
It's also that Kirk was murdered for opinions, not actions.
When you add that maybe half the population agrees with at least some of what Kirk said, his murder seems like a direct threat to the average person, in a way that murder of a politician, high-ranking military figure, or CEO does not.
Yes, I think this is why Charlie Kirk’s murder seems so chilling to so many of us. Or maybe I should say, the murder and the gleeful reactions to it. There’s something indescribable about seeing that horrific video and then discovering a high school classmate, a cousin, others, savagely attacking . . . the victim.
I can't think of a single high school classmate, cousin, or friend who has been savagely attacking the victim.
Kirk was murdered because a love-infatuated denizen of digital dark places labeled him a hater beyond redemption. I would bet that 90 percent of the population agreed with at least some of what Kirk said. I've found points I agree with.
I am laughing at the mental image of people settling office rivalries or neighborhood fence line disputes with sword and shield.
I read a short story years ago in which a college faculty was debating whether to require a second semester of critical thought. The whole story is various people, students, professors, maybe even secretaries, walking around with pistols in their pockets, whispering the the ears of various people when then walked as instructed, until someone else whispered in the ear of the person who kidnapped the first, until a faculty meeting erupted in mutual gunfire as one professors yelled "Second semester criticism, over here!" while others were building a barricade with chairs and tables.
What "normal left"? Scratch any leftist and you find a self-righteous egotist so convinced of their virtue that anybody who disagrees with them must be pure evil (Nazi, anyone?) and may therefore be shot on sight with a clear conscience. I am almost amused by Rod's numerous accounts of conservatives (including him), and even moderates, who discover to their shock that their liberal "friend" is actually a monster under the skin who would prefer them dead.
Eugene Debs would have been capable of delivering a respectful eulogy at Charlie Kirk's funeral. And he wasn't one of a kind, although he was very much a mom and apple pie socialist.
I agree, and I can think of a number of people on the left from that time who could have done the same. But I think things have changed. These are not your father's leftists.
Things have changed. But my point is that these are not leftists at all, however much they may flatter themselves. In classical Marxist terminology, they are right-wing petit-bourgeois deviationists of an opportunistic proto-social-fascist character. (That kind of jargon isn't good for much in defining real world problems, but it can neatly describe those who are following a vaguely "left" sentimentality into the wilderness while trying to remain comfortably equipped. They do have some distinctly fascist traits, which I think is part of what you object to. So do I.)
To me, the difficulty is how to develop a platform that appeals to wage-laborers as wage-laborers who are NOT heirs to organized crafts, also not in mass production facilities where thousands could walk out on strike in a rapid, coordinated way, and have some openings toward either traditional small business development, or the "gig economy" or solo self-employment. I don't have the answer. I know the "progressive" factions aren't it -- they are preoccupied with petty issues of non-class origin. I think what most of us share in common is a sense that large, powerful, remote, inaccessible institutions are dominating our lives, and leaving us few options for self-determination. Of course fascists can appeal to that sentiment also. Political motivation seldom falls into neat ideological categories.
No one knows where this all leads, but my sense is we're headed into a divine riposte, permitting will or ordaining will I cannot say, but a "peak event" such as a grid takedown, or a nuke attack (suitcase nuclear bomb going off in multiple strategic locations), or a global provocation that can't be ignored (like an invasion of South Korea or Taiwan). So prepare as best you can, and continue to lean on God. That strategy has never failed me, against all odds. Not that I'm invincible (or even that methodic or clever a prepper), but for whatever reasons are only known to God, I should have been dead about 10 times in my life (and I've lead a very ordinary, average life, a "glorified (yet formerly employed) housewife" some might say). Still, I find at age 72 I'm still not dead yet, against unbelievably screw ball or just stupid or unlucky near-misses. So I don't worry. St. Francis de Sales said "God forbids us to worry, but He commands us to pray." Another saint saying I like: "I worry up to midnight. After midnight, I let God worry." And another (better known): "Work as if everything depends on you, and pray as if everything depends on God." Ah, bear with me for my dear deceased Mother's words of wisdom to me. I used to ask my beloved Mother (even as a child of 10): "Mom, what is your philosophy of life?" And she replied:
"Do it yourself." Touche, mon ami.
There is a lot of wisdom in this.
I love that saying about worrying only up until midnight. Is that St. Francis de Sales too?
And I tend to agree with you about some sort of divine riposte. Yesterday, we had a thread here in the comments about the "wrath of God." I think one way to understand that, if I may put it so vulgarly, is that it is the biblical way of what we today say: FAFO. God's "wrath" is not something artificially and capriciously added onto a situation. Rather, the seeds of destruction and punishment are already sown within the evil action itself, and the "wrath of God" is simply when those seeds have grown and borne their bitter fruit. Another way of saying it that I like is "reality [or perhaps Reality] always has the last at bat."
Your last paragraph, the first sentence. Is there anybody in these boxes with, you know, connections (heh), who can get somebody to pick up the phone and have Thune greenlight Senate hearings on the whole transgender con job? The danger of depression and psychosis in the medications and hormones, the actual scientific evidence that this is simply whim? For the love of God the GOP has a solid majority in the Senate to do this, so do it.
I don’t know the ins and outs of GOP politics these days. You’d at least think the notion of “we could be next!” would convince people to start looking more carefully at this, but who knows. For what it’s worth, I worry less about militancy in the trans community, though it has definitely always been there, than I do about those who supported this murder. If nothing else, the numbers are just vastly higher for the latter.
Well, there's big pharma money, the unwillingness to look all, you know, repressed and rigid. And then there's just being a pussy.
Senate committees are not very good at that. What it would take is, first, an administration committed to following the evidence wherever it led, second, a team of qualified researchers with no ax to grind, no bias, no expectations, also willing to follow the evidence wherever it led, and third, funding for a fifty year longitudinal study, with progress reports every ten years.
“Transmanian devils”. Excellent!!
Not sure you meant it but “benefit over backwards” really encapsulates the truth!!
this last week has been an unveiling for me in several ways.
after hearing of his death, one of my oldest friends replied ‘may he burn in Hell’ as well as other horrible statements.
as a Christian I am having a tough time with this. I love this person but am shocked at the level of hate and darkness inside him. I really don’t know what to do.
Pray for him…and watch your back.
This started with the assassination of Brian Thompson. Following that horrific event, the mainstream left (Liz Warren, e.g.) immediately settled into a WCVB ("We condemn violence, BUT . . .") posture. They got away with it in that case because, hey, people on the left and right hate insurance companies, right?? Never mind that what we let them get away with was the tacit endorsement of the public execution in broad daylight on the streets of Manhattan of a husband and father who had risen from humble beginnings to do well as an insurance executive for the sole reason that he was an insurance executive!
In the case of Charlie Kirk, the left is being slightly more reticent in how they're playing the WCVB card because they know that roughly half the population believes many of the same things Charlie Kirk believed. But just because they're winking instead of saying the "BUT" out loud doesn't mean they actually have any remorse about what has happened.
You are so right. I believe some of us are ahead of the curve seeing that the War Department needs to engage the universities in a pre-emptive manner. Woke universities have become an organized conspiracy against the exercise of citizens’ constitutional liberties. Armed by illegitimate ‘ Critical Studies’ departments and led by lgbtq revolutionaries disguised as administrators, they are a 5th column for fanatical, religious, reality denying revolutionary Neo-Marxism. The monster children of 68! They are violating the Insurrection Act in all kinds of ways. An armed response by our most disciplined, hierarchical, traditional institutions well able to enforce the embodied reality of human personhood is our best line of attack. And, they deserve it.
One thing that might result from Kirk's assassination is that conservative speakers will be far less likely to have speaking engagements outside which are far harder to police.
Rod, it’s great to recognize the situation but what to do? That’s where people of good will from various communities need pratical suggestions.
What to do? Prepare, pray, preach, fast, repent, vote, demand we "true the vote," and ask our lawmakers to enforce the extant laws. There are enough laws on the books to take the networks of trantifa down. Do we have the political will? An article that gets into the weeds of how to find the murderous pods in the trantifa (and antifa) networks is contained in Robert W. Malone's free article "The Enemy within: Tyler Robinson is Trantifa."
An Orthodox writer on Substack (can't recall who) said our best weapons are confession, repentance, Communion, and prayer. Mainly repentance and prayer.
Form new parties, and ditch the overgrown self-serving edifices who insist they are our only option.
love your work Rod, but seriously: trigger warning please. i have avoided looking at Charlie’s murder and you dump a picture in the thread. can you take it out please?
I found it useful, though I don't want to look at the video of his being shot, which probably have all been taken down. The picture Rod shows dovetails with a youtube analysis by a prepper (and seeming gun expert) named Survival Living with a YT video entitled "Proof the FBI is Lying about Charlie Kirk Shooting". He does an in depth analysis of the video (purposely not showing the disturbing video) in which he analyzes what seems to have occured, which is that the slug seemed to have bounced off of Charlie's bullet-proof undergarmet and up into his left jugular. He discusses that there is no plausible explantion of how the gun got up into the building with the sniper Tyler Robinson or back out, since videos of Tyler's going up the stairs and jumping off the building show no gun. These and other factual anamolies are also discussed by Donald Jeffries in a free, fascinating substack entitled "Charlie Kirk: What Really Happened?"
So what do I think? I think the gunman did not act alone.
Matt Walsh has a short program today. He spends the first half going over the texts between Romeo and Romeo and pointing out anomalies; the texts do have an artificial quality. Clearly, they are meant to exonerate "my love." They seem as disingenuous as can be.
I'm surprised that Rod didn't cite the pre assassination messages between several furbabes about the "big event" they were all expecting on September 10.
Walsh thinks, and based on what Patel said yesterday it looks as though the government thinks, that this may be a much bigger thing than just those two guys.
Ah, credit to Rod: he wrote about the possibility of the involvement of a lot of people yesterday.
But Matt Walsh's analysis bears attention paying. The phony quality of the texting reinforces the idea that a lot of people knew about this.
I think it is fair. The seriousness of the consequences caused by this deeply anti-social and malevolent assassination needs to sink in, across the board. For once, I think Rod's elevated agitation is justified.
Don't, Dreher. These morons (not Dr. Howard) think it's a videogame.
I've heard that young kids can watch and participate in Charlie's assassination through games on Roblox. Though Roblox takes them down, they keep getting put up.
Agree. I have avoided watching the murder videos of the last week or so. There are things that are just not good for you to see.
The technology metamorphosed so radically between 1963 and 2025 that the video of Charlie Kirk's assassination makes frames 313 and after of the Zapruder film, in which the bullet hits JFK in the head and the viewer sees its effects, seem more illustrative than documenting.
"Let them see what they've done."
--Jacqueline Kennedy, staying dressed in her blood-and-brain-spattered clothing, 11/22/1963.
I, too, have avoided looking at videos of Kirks murder. Like you, I was initially angry that Rod posted it without any warning. But - a couple of days prior to the shooting, videos were made available of Iryna Zarutska's murder, most of which were so heavily edited in such a way as to cause confusion. For example, one moment Iryna was visible, but the next she wasn't, so where did she go? She was viciously stabbed but I saw no blood. Only by watching an unedited video was my confusion resolved. As the murderer walked away, Iryna slumped over and fell on the floor, hidden from view by a panel in front of her. All that could be seen was her left hand reaching up, trembling, reaching out for something, anything or anyone, who might help her. Her hand weakened, then slumped and fell from view. At that moment a pool of blood seeped under the panel, streamed down and pooled on the steps of the entrance she had just climbed barely five minutes before.
Was it traumatizing to see? Absolutely. Did I regret watching it? No.
The same applies to Charlie Kirk.
The quote Dan Jones posted is why:
"Let them see what they've done."
--Jacqueline Kennedy, staying dressed in her blood-and-brain-spattered clothing, 11/22/1963.
One of the problems we face today is that we refuse to face evil. We don't want to talk about it. We don't even want to think about it. We would much rather pretend it doesn't exist - and if it does exist - we hope it just goes away. But it won't go away. In fact, it's getting worse. We've been warned.
We keep hearing about militias of white supremacists, armed to the hilt. If these actually existed, where are they? The last time they appeared they were “armed” with tiki torches.
I don’t think the lefty loons will stop until they fear swift and painful consequences. Sounds like I’m advocating a street war, I’m not. I’m advocating the fear of a population that’s not going to take it anymore. That’s not going to stand by while the Luigi’s and Tyler’s are turned into heroes. I’d like to see a way that chat rooms can be shut down. Insert a disabling virus onto the devices of kids planning chaos. They have to be stopped.
I think Tyler deserves a public hanging. Let’s see how the furries react to that.
They are the same ones who led an unarmed insurrection. They are a figment of Democrat politically useful fantasy.
I know what I write is a fantasy, but Mangione and Robinson deserve the William Wallace treatment. Stripped naked, dragged behind a horse cart for six miles, disembowelment, emasculation and hanging. Call me old fashioned.
The William Wallace treatment didn't work out that well for Edward I. No hero's death for these men.
Edward I's sissy son, Edward II, got the backlash.
So to speak…
But William Wallace didn't. Which makes me hesitant to inflict it on anyone. Death is final -- "vengeance is mine, saith the Lord."
I think all the "right-wing militias" got squashed after Oklahoma City. The ones you see with the tiki torches ("Patriot Front" and so on) are probably false-flag ops.
I know that makes me sound like I wear an aluminum-foil hat, but it's the best explanation for why you don't see them in situations like this.
They're not false flags, just amateurs on parade. Antifa, for all their airs, aren't much different. (The real Antifa could have shown them a thing or two, but they fought a well-populated, well-armed, well-funded SA.)
A true militia would be every adult, armed, reporting for duty when called.
As in Switzerland?
Or Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia... before creation of the National Guard.
https://open.substack.com/pub/citizenhistorian/p/the-meaning-of-militia-the-second?r=2r4gvi&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Way back in 2002, I remember reading Stephen King's "On Writing" and really enjoying it. One of the things he discusses is putting together concepts for plots. which is a really interesting topic. For example, J.K. Rowling has talked about how a large part of the Harry Potter series was born from the simple question, "What if someone were famous, but didn't know it?". I kid you not, but one of the examples King used in his book was "Is murder/assassination ever justified?" He also talks about putting some kind of unexpected twist in the premise, and I don't remember the book, but apparently one of his novels from way back when was about someone who had visions of the future and knew if this person running for political office was successful, he'd eventually become another Hitler. Knowing this, was offing the person as a preventative measure justified. (I may have some details slightly off - I read the book two decades ago.)
Over the last couple of decades, in particular, it seems like the left's answer to King's question there is "yes". I think we've kind of gone through stages of dealing with that reality in different ways; twenty years ago, I think most on our side would have still been in the mindset that when the leftists say they want to kill people, the assumption was just that it was hyperbole, people blowing off steam, etc. No, many really do want to do people who don't align with their thinking harm or death, and it's interesting to observe that it seems like there are a) more people who are intolerant of all the rejoicing over murder, period, and b) more places that are meting out punishment for people who are expressing this publicly. Is it too little too late? Probably too little to get back to where we were, but it's a good start if we're not going to just give up and die.
The mention of the female philosopher reminded me a good bit of J.K. Rowling, and I came across this article a few days ago, and I certainly found it interesting: https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/jk-rowling-says-she-now-opposes-assisted-suicide-and-feels-god-sized-vacuum-inside/
Re: He also talks about putting some kind of unexpected twist in the premise, and I don't remember the book, but apparently one of his novels from way back when was about someone who had visions of the future and knew if this person running for political office was successful, he'd eventually become another Hitler.
The Dead Zone. In the movie version at least the politician would start a nuclear war. That ups the ante far beyond the Hitler scenario: kill someone before they can kill billions?
I don't think he mentioned the nuclear war part in "On Writing" though it has been a loooong time.
I checked online and yes, the novel involves someone who will start a nuclear war-- though the guy is a total rotter, a demagogue, corrupt, not adverse to using violence. It might have been more interesting had he been basically a good guy, but would start that war through bungling and misunderstanding.
Fortunately things do not work that way with the future. The farther out complex things are the more uncertain they become. But if one were a armed guard in a bunker where Trump or Putin or Xi is about to enter the nuclear codes in the "football" to send the missiles flying, should one shoot him to stop that?
The "Dead Zone" is the book you're discussing, I think. But King's "11-22-63" had a bit more nuance, if I remember correctly: the main character is able to travel back in time and chooses to try to prevent JFK's assassination. I think that this opens up another geo-political can of worms, and the result is nuclear war....it's been years, so bear with me if I have that wrong.
There was a Star Trek (OS) in which Kirk ends up in the US in the 30s and saves the life of a missionary woman who is about to be struck by a car. And all history changes-- because this woman goes on to convert FDR and many Americans to a pacifist creed so the US does not enter WWII-- and the Nazis win. The fix is not a happy one.
A great episode.
That is considered the finest original Star Trek episode. "The City on the Edge of Forever." Stars Joan Collins as Captain Kirk's love interest. Edith Keeler (Joan Collins) runs a soup kitchen which somehow leads her to forming a peace movement that prevents America from entering World War Two, allowing Nazi Germany to win World War Two.
Remember, though, one of King's other key points in the crafting of the story: early on in The Dead Zone, the reader is presented a scene of the villain kicking a dog to death for fun. Only the reader ever knows this - the protagonist can never be absolutely certain he is right, even if the reader knows he is. It is a bit of grim farce to add tension to the rest of the book, and a clever writers' trick in story building.
But this is also not how the world works, of course, and that is the (forgiving the inadvertent pun) the fatal conceit of Hitler-Murder Fantasies. We can never actually know what lurks in the hearts of others. And the better versions of these stories recognize this limitation. But the shallow moral imagination of the Left on this matter is convinced it has perfect clarity of foresight, and all the smugness of being "on the right side of history", as if all is fore-ordained.
I've never actually read the book - just remembered his comments about it in "On Writing"
Same, actually. But I remembered him, in On Writing, specifically talking about using the dog's death as a 3rd party omniscience trick so the reader would immediately side with the protagonist.
If you KNOW that you could prevent WW III by offing a man running for office, of course that would be justified. If nobody else could see that, then you might well have to suffer the disgrace of being tried in court and in the public mind as a vicious enemy of reasoned, peaceful political competition. But the fallacy in such arguments is, we DO NOT know the future, it is only our personal speculation.
Here is an explanation by Cy Canterel of "blackpill accelerationist nihilism."
https://www.tiktok.com/@cybelecanterel/video/7549384885798980894
The only explanation of nihilism I have seen that makes sense, because status and belonging still matter.
A generational chasm between us oldies and those who grew up nearly full time on line. Groypers and edgelords.
It's a lot more than generational. Generational was when parents couldn't understand why Boomer teen boys wanted to let their hair grow long.
I watched as much of the video you provided a link to as I could bear. I suppose I grasped what the woman was saying. It made me wish we had colonized Mars, and emigration from Earth, mostly of now hairless Boomers, were routine.
Are people really going to buy into this fake and gay romance story about Tyler Robinson? Maybe some loons, but I don't see it playing well in public. Or maybe I'm wrong, and our comentator Derek was right, that more than 40% of the electorate really do wish active political violence on their opponents.
Regardless, just say no to Transgenderism. No need to placate to mental illness, not anymore.
Not ever.
Kirn is as usual exactly on the money. I thought the cat from ABC was just spinning out of orbit (evidently he's been suspended before--a good reason to assign him a story like this), but then there was ol' Montel and this is orchestrated. I mean, they don't have their hands on all the levers but Kirn is right that of the preferred narratives Romeo and Juliet will win. Jimmy Kimmel on air Monday night saying the kid was MAGA when it as evident by Sunday to anybody who could read what had happened. My best friend, a journalist retired from a national newspaper, admitted by Sunday on X that the motivation was political. That didn't stop somebody last night (pseudonymously of course, the pussy) from commenting to me on X that the family was "hard core MAGA" and had done a bad job raising the kid. It's all over the map, but the love wins piece comes from the top.
In two comments thus far, you have used the word "pussy". Outstanding. There are times when no other word works to describe a man. That is one of a few words that have been socially "banned" that need to be resurrected.
Dreher used "piece of shit" today, and it emboldened me. Sometimes you got to cut to the chase. The vast majority of GOP Senators, led by Thune, are, yes, precisely, pussies.
Many, many, many years ago I heard Robert Novak on The McLaughlin Group use the word p***y. Not that it's right.
Yeah - I suspect so, but it’s a long way from Romeo and Juliet to Tyler and the Furry.
A lot of older people are just learning about how mainstream furry culture is. Word is they are really upset. It’s still fringe, but not that fringe.
It might play well in secular circles, but most people aren’t purely secular. That’s a big reason why we aren’t as far gone as many places in Europe. America is still very religious compared to Europe.
I’m not 100% convinced, but I’ll noodle it around in my brain a bit more and think on it.
Yes. That moron at ABC had to walk back his sniff sniff love wins remarks. I think that’s significant.
The poll I linked to yesterday showed "only" 20% accept political violence. Here it is again:
https://x.com/ramez/status/1967009420728299573
Of course that's 20% too many!
Something very crucial that too many people here do not get: The Left fears the Right every but as much as the Right fears the Left.
By the way what do you mean by "fake romance"? Are you saying Robinson was not romantically involved with his roommate? I was skeptical at first, but that seems rather solidly vetted at this point.
Even if the 20% number is more accurate than the 40% number, this is not your typical 80-20 issue, as in "Oh, don't worry about those fringe people. They represent only 20% of the population."
20% of the adult population of the U.S. represents over 50 million people! Just think on that a moment. 50 million of your fellow citizens (no doubt the vast, vast majority of whom are on the left) believe that killing you for the political beliefs you hold is an okay thing to do.
I think it's past time to be worried.
Well, I did say "That's 20% is too many".
And no, the same poll shows that over twice as many Republicans as Democrats endorse political violence.
Well, it is a PBS poll, so you may call me skeptical of its results as between Ds and Rs.
Nevertheless, even if the poll is close to accurate, it's probably not surprising that immediately following the assassination of a conservative icon by a trans supporting asshole - the second high profile trans-motivated murder in a week (including the murder of children attending Mass the previous week) that Republicans and the right in general would be on edge and feeling the need to grab pitchforks.
My guess is that any R support for political violence at this point is something akin to a belief in self defense. If the Left feels free to shoot conservatives because of their political beliefs, don't expect the Right to simply sit still and not want to shoot back.
Hence Rod's civil war admonitions.
That’s where I land - self defense is 100% ok. It’s not about wanting to eliminate people or groups that disagree with me. I don’t think that options should be off the table, if the situation gets so extreme that you have to arm and protect yourself. Do I want that? No. I want to live in peace with my neighbors.
Do I want the option, if things go off the rails? Yes.
Situations get untenable and violent and it’s important to accept that. Our country has had a few wars on American soil, so it’s not unreasonable to believe that there might be violence in the future if we can’t work out stuff out politically. We are human beings and humans fight violently sometimes. That’s why it’s so important for civil society to keep the fringes in check.
R support for political violence has been consistently double that of Ds over the past 5 years (the election related shifts are interesting): https://www.prri.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/PRRI-Apr-2025-Trump-100-Fig_19.png
You are right that is about a belief in self defense (this is true for Ds as well). Anybody that looks at the media (and social media) directed at partisans for either side can see it is filled with the message that the other side is completely unreasonable, bent on total victory, and "not like us".
Well, I've been saying for years, only about 25 percent of the population really LIKE Donald Trump, the rest are just scared of what the Democrats offer. Its probably up to 35-40 percent now, but some of that would peel away if there were a sane and sensible alternative on offer. The Dems aren't it.
The "fake and gay" comment was a reference to what has been euphemistically described as performative LGBT activism. Though in this situation, the "fake and gay" is being directed at those who would use Robinson's homosexual romance as some weak reason to excuse his assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Though it does seem my original intuition (that only around 20% of people wish for political violence) was reasonable; I think there are enough normal people who are waking up and denouncing the vicious response to Kirk's murder.
Thanks for explaining
"The Left fears the Right every bit as much as the Right fears the Left" only because the Left operates under the childish delusion that no one should have a worldview or even an opinion different from their own. And God forbid such a person EXPRESS a differing worldview or opinion. When you have convinced yourself that words in the form of a different opinion are "violence" and that refusing to go along with someone's gender delusion is "genocide," then yes, I guess you fear the other side. But that doesn't mean your fear has any basis in reality.
The Left’s fears are demonstrably on far shakier ground than those on the Right.
Broadly, the Left historically has aimed for internal security (economic, health) and the Right for liberty (economic, private arrangements of many kinds).
The party whose prime concern is security will inevitably be more paranoid and subject to more fantasies. That’s why we laugh today at the John Birch Society or at Alex Jones and why spoofs like the Weekly World News were so funny.
Whether any given fears are realistic or not is irrelevant. That people will be motivated by them is the crucial fact.
I think it is highly relevant to show those who would kill witches that there are no witches.
And that cuts both ways.
"Wotches" were killed in no few numbers even though are no witches (of the sort witch hunters posited)
Why do you say there are no witches?
True. But I think it’s still important to delineate between fear and delusion. We can treat delusion and help people understand it’s just that.
Maybe its true? So what? It doesn't change the moral or legal calculus at all.
Consider the possibility that the Kirk killer chose to plan his murder in such a public way precisely to elicit the gross online celebration we’ve been seeing. He chose a crowded public venue, at a university, with plenty of cameras (he also didn’t care about traumatizing the thousands of people or risking injuring/killing any bystanders by attempting an uncertain relatively long-distance shot).
He wanted everyone to see his - whether in person or on social media - and he wanted exactly this reaction.
I simply find it unbelievable that anyone on the left would choose *this* hill to die on.
Anyone doing this could well be malevolent, as Rod claims. But what they also are, is unbelievably stupid, self-righteous and in the process of self-destruction.
I suspect more and more we’re going to see a repeat of the 70’s soon, with bombings and assassinations and riots becoming commonplace again. I mean we’re already in the middle of something like that.
That, of course, ushered in a generation of conservative dominance over the Presidency from Nixon to George HW Bush, with multiple landslide wins along the way.
I read a piece that observed that this is a pattern with the left - they whip themselves into a frenzy of utopian hopes and dreams, and then when their ideas fail and are rejected, they turn violent in their thwarted rage. The 70’s followed the Utopianism of the 60’s, with Nixon’s wins driving home that there really was a Silent Majority against what the left wanted. It seems to me that Trump’s reelection, a much clearer repudiation than the squeaker in 2016, may have triggered a similar psychological break after two decades of belief in inevitable “progress” and the defeat of the hated right due to demographic change.
Nixon was pretty mainstream, even a bit liberal, and Reagan wasn't that far to the Right as depicted. Today's Right is too far from the center (ditto the Left of course!). So no, there will be no landslides to come since today's political strategy is all about playing to the base.
Reagan was strongly conservative but he was a realist. Getting half of what you want was better than getting zero. Reagan governed in an era when there was still liberal and moderate Republicans and conservative and moderate Democrats. That's all dead now.
Predicting elections this far out is of course a mug’s game, and I didn’t really mean to imply that we are about to see Nixon and Reagan level landslides.
It’s worth noting though that Trump can’t run again, so we don’t really know what the character of the next Republican standard bearer is going to be like. We also don’t know what the next two years holds.
Re: "there will be no landslides to come since today's political strategy is all about playing to the base." I think this too, but doubt that it would altogether hold true if there is another 9/11 or other peak event of the type Anne Heath wrote about a few hours ago. E.g., 2004 when Dubya romped to re-election and the GOP strengthened control of both chambers.
Bush won a solid victory in 2004, but it was a long way from a landslide. If 70,000 votes in Ohio had been different we would have had President Kerry.
Two years later the "permanent GOP majority" was proved to be about as permanent as a late spring snowstorm.
Point well taken. What we used to call a landslide surely will never happen among such a polarized electorate; what would now be called a landslide could happen but would require unusual events to fuel it. Better?
Obama's win in 2008 was a mini-landslide, 53-46 percent over McCain. The Republicans were discredited by 2008 with the fiascos in the Middle East and the Wall Street meltdown. McCain was a very flawed candidate, hated by a large minority of his own party.
Obama was very much an accidental success. Yes, he was being readied for prime time in 2004, but his ascendancy was no sure thing. The accidents of the 2008 meltdown and Iraq War fiasco were not preordained. Had neither been as sharply recent, neither would have had as much impact.
I wish I’d had a dime for every “Raygun” I saw scrawled on university lavatory walls in the 1980s.
The Republicans are recapturing the center. It’s there for the picking if the Democrats keep downplaying murder. Especially murder readily viewable online with blood splashing out of jugulars or running in red rivulets along the floor of transit cars.
I can envision ads that could keep the presidency out of Democrats’ hands for the next generation, until they find their next Grover Cleveland.
I've been thinking along those lines as well - that we seem to be repeating, to some extent, the transition from the 60s into the 70s.
Re: I suspect more and more we’re going to see a repeat of the 70’s soon, with bombings and assassinations and riots becoming commonplace again. I mean we’re already in the middle of something like that.
Trying to come up with modern-day analogs of the groups back then. I think it's safe to say today's Antifa (or Trantifa if you like) are the Weathermen. Who are the Black Panthers? BLM doesn't really map. Any other ideas/groups?
Not before they destroy us.
The fantasies of trantifa aside, what I have seen in the last 10 years is that the mainstream left is only effective at destroying itself, while strengthening the right.
At least, that is what all the trends until now show.
I would have thought that to be applicable to the radical left rather than the mainstream left. Maybe I'm missing something.
Trump has won twice and almost won in 2020 because the mainstream left is mostly capable only of own goals, shooting itself in the foot and aggravating people outside of their immediate social environment.
If the left in America was competent, the right would not be resurgent and Trump would not be president. Trump is a direct outcome of the mistakes, neglect and idiocy of the mainstream left.
I think you’re right. The electoral cycle has favored the Left, but barely. Obama’s terms obscured what I think is the true character of the American electorate, which has operated in good faith and has been tolerant to a fault. That gay marriage was opposed by majorities of voters in 2008, but favored after Obergefell speaks largely to respect for the Supreme Court rather than to the issue itself. The Court’s reputation itself lent respectability to gay marriage.
That’s political tolerance in action. Trump’s second election after his lawfare persecution is also a sign of respect for the true rule of law. Voters understood that Trump is only a felon in the eyes of fundamentally dishonest people.
When the Left militates against our institutions as such, it loses. But it doesn’t recognize the damage it does to itself because the voters only get the chance to express themselves every four years (in reality—the midterms are about party strength).
This is a reasonable sentiment, but the hard left aren't reasonable. They choose their flag-bearers and signature events not for their 'winsomeness' (to borrow a seeker-sensitive term much beloved in recent years in Christian circles) but precisely for their viciousness and ability to shock.
Think about BLM's 'heroes', for example: Trayvon, Michael Brown, and, above all, of course, George Floyd: all unsympathetic, antisocial, and morally-dubious to outright-lawless.
And then consider the Luigi/Brian Thompson assassination. Yes, Luigi is cute, but the manner in which he did his killing would, in a saner culture, have been considered repulsive: he sneaked up behind his victim in the dark and shot him in the back. What a brave hero!
The point is, the Woke believe they have the God-like power to shape and use these killers and their filthy works, to redeem not just the killers themselves, but the rest of us as well. They believe their inherent goodness and wisdom can reshape human nature and bring about their elusive utopia. They believe they are Saviors.
They are certainly self-righteous; we'll all agree on that. But where we can see their glaring stupidity and self-destruction, they see only selfless virtue and their own saving power.
That's why this isn't going to end well without divine help.
Their inner core is nihilism. They have a real absence of meaning inside of them and their only flicker of purpose is signing onto some kind of latter-day LGBT marxism (which is their replacement for religion).
This ideology keeps them going by filling the meaning hole, but it is an ideology that is fragile, since it is constantly challenged by reality on all fronts. It also renders the person incapable of being effective or successful in the real world (because success = making peace with the capitalist system). This makes the left-wing nihilist even worse-off because he sees himself being a loser and an outcast in real-life terms.
All of this, compounded over years, turns the soul of the left-wing nihilist into a shrivelled, crumpled-up piece of coal. In many cases, the person desires violence or destruction, but simultaneously believes himself as good (since leftists are definitionally the "good people" in his ideology). Hence he is capable of inhumanity against anyone he thinks is the enemy.
To be clear, this applies specifically to terminally online Marxists (like Tyler Robinson), not mainstream Democrats. If the person seems reasonably happy, is married and is successful in his job, it doesn't apply. If he is obviously troubled, single and terminally online, it does.
I think this is accurate.
As for mainstream politics, I think there are two kinds: 1) practical people who believe that, in general, greater weight must be applied to policies favored by one side or the other, but that both sides have good reasons for their positions or 2) patient people who long for Utopia but who will work within the system assiduously to achieve incremental change, while never conceding any real legitimacy to the goals or ideas of their opponents.
Outside of this, we have the radicals who want fundamental change now or in the near future, and who view all institutions as impediments to achieving fundamental change.
That's true, but don't forget the silent majority - politically luke-warm people who only have political views to fit in with their chosen tribe and put the majority of their emotional energy and time into other pursuits.
For outright politicians, there is also a third category in addition to your two - the amoral careerist, who like a chameleon, fits his spots to match his surroundings. Cf. Gavin Newsom
I wonder if these are stable categories over decades, though? When I was younger, I naively assumed all politics was practical. Yet, I’ve seen how the practical people are undermined over the long term by the patient Utopians, who never intended to abide by the agreements reached by practical people. At some point, I think the practical ones must either concede defeat, adopt the tactics of the patient Utopians, or join the radicals.
What I've heard is that Robinson's assassination of Charlie Kirk is considered NVE (Nihilistic Violent Extremism). Accurate characterization.
Make no mistake, these folks are so empty that they are easily inhabited by evil. (as per Rod's comments in other posts).
OTOH, there are some very positive outcomes--many returning to church and faith. FANTASTIC news and evidence of the working of the Holy Spirit.
From my perspective, it is also helpful that a number of folks are switching their allegiance from Dem to Republican. Both FL and PA report significant spikes (double or higher) in R registration.
If any Dem would speak plainly, without "both sides-ism", and acknowledge that the rhetoric of calling opponents fascists and Nazis was WRONG, and take responsibility for injecting this evil into our country--well that would be a game changer. No excuses, only repentance. Obama's comments today don't qualify. Sen Fetterman comes closest.
Rod, Have you ever read "People of the Lie" by M. Scott Peck? I haven't gone back to it in a long time as I find it (emotionally) a hard read, but the basic thesis is that people commit evil behavior to maintain the lie, that maintaining the lie REQUIRES evil to suppress the truth, and this happens because doing evil to maintain the lie is more psychologically acceptable than facing the truth. When I first read it, I was immediately convicted that this was basically correct and was profoundly affected. It has led me to try to accept all uncomfortable truths about myself.
“The People of the Lie” is a book everyone should read. Doing evil to maintain a lie is exactly what is going on with regard to the Ukraine War. The big lie, of course, is that Putin is a second Hitler, hell bent in conquering Europe. So the killing must go on because of feigned paranoia about Putin and Russia.
Thank you for the reading recommendation
You're welcome.
A friend of mine worked for a while as a law clerk for a public defender’s office in CA. He had occasion to sit in on client meetings with a notorious serial killer, who was later convicted. He told me that the most chilling thing about this was that despite the raft of circumstantial, forensic, and eyewitness evidence (one of his victims survived) tying the defendant to the crimes, the killer maintained his innocence and had a lie to explain away every damning piece of evidence. He lied to cover for his lies, and showed absolutely no remorse.
With the amount of Cluster B diagnoses floating around in the unhinged Left, I’m not at all surprised at what goes on to maintain the lies.
Wow! And sad.
Thank you for highlighting Kathleen Stock and Mike Solana today. The more sane minds the better, especially right now.
About the dreadlock don at Oxford. He may be in a pickle, i.e., already have broken the law:
https://x.com/shadrach_shad/status/1966979318783103379
I'd be really surprised if anything happens to him
Just to be clear: he's a student, not a don. (The Oxford Union is a private student debating club associated with the university but formally not part of it.)
I kno, I know. I was trying to be funny.
Or. at least, alliterative.
OK, go ahead and hate on me, but I do think it's important to remember that Sean Hannity and Mark Levin, e.g., were still pushing WMD when it was evident to everybody else that Iraq '03 had been a put up job, a murderous, illegal, and mostly stupid put-up job. I. heard Hannity encourage one of his knuckle-dragging callers in this delusion as late as 2007 and almost drove the car off the road in my rage.
That said, this is one of your best pieces and I shared it on X.
Hannity, Levin and Victor Davis Hanson all three stood with Bush all the way in Dubya's Middle East twin fiascos.
Hanson was honest enough to admit his error. The other two morons went on their merry way.
And onto new wives as well.
I've thought one of them a buffoon and the other an unscrupulous twister of truth ever since I first encountered their blatherings.