Everybody has a take. Everybody is deploring, threatening, scribbling cringeworthy hagiographies, lowering flags to half mast, offering up thoughts and prayers.
Charlie Kirk got what he deserved. He got what he’d already said he’d be willing to accept, if not endorse, as collateral damage in pursuit of what he considered to be a vigorous and necessary defense of the second amendment.
He never imagined that he’d be the one with a fatal bullet hole in him. Those would be reserved for Jews, immigrants, black and brown people, gay people, women who refused his benevolent instruction, empathetic people, people who’d read the wrong books, and above all, people who’d had a belly full of his trumpeted triumphs of the will to come, the triumphs that he and his equally deluded buddies were peddling to anyone stupid enough to take them at face value.
Civil society is in abeyance in the US. This was never our fault, but restoring it is nevertheless our duty. We can start by not shedding any tears for this sad, sick, puer aeternus, whose intelligence matured tragically earlier than his wisdom.
As more information on the shooter emerges it’s interesting to see the about-faces that are happening in realtime. It seems like the more they go out on a limb to try to pre-characterize these guys as … something else – “democrats”, trans people”, “Teh Gays!!!” – the worse the truth finally ends up being. Prominent rightwing speakers are now running away from their messaging – and appearances – as fast as humanly possible.
Now that we know the perp was a fan, Nick fuentes – Groyper Grand Poobah and fearsome pepper-spray-wielding woman pusher – is out here backing up so fast we can see the skid marks in his tight whities, mewling “To all my followers if you take up arms, I disavow you. I disown you. In the strongest possible terms. That is not what we’re about.”
As fuckin’ if, buddy.
The biggest upside of all this nastiness at the moment is that Ben Shapiro, the only grown man on the planet who mistakes a wet pussy for a diseased one, is canceling appearances.
Sort of looks like they disagree with Kirk’s assertion that some deaths are the price we pay for having the Second Amendment. Or only agreed with it as long as white men weren’t the targets.
The costs of grifting, like everything else, are rising. Driven up by the very assholes who’ve been embracing violence all along. These guys have always been nothing but cowardly bargain basement shoppers in the (pseudo-)Patriot market. Even Musk’s AI, Grok, is shitting all over them.
Phew. I guess I needed to vent just a little. Thanks for putting that valve in front of me!
They have no shame, but they can be made to look as stupid as they truly are, which is maybe recompense enough for all the din and stupidity they shower us with on a daily basis. Depantsing a vicious hypocrite in public may not be essential to the building of a new Jerusalem, but it is one of those guilty pleasures that even Jesus hisself was known to indulge in.
And please, no thanks are needed. The Calliope of Dread always has room for another well-tuned pipe. It’s not we ourselves who’ve made us virtual comrades in arms, after all—it’s the goddamned Zetigeist, no?
Puer aeternus…
Whoa, WT. Brilliant! Just brilliant.
I had to look that up. The niggles in the back of my brain were too vague, but this application is perfect. And, I’m not one bit sure that aspects don’t apply to Kirk’s assassin as well…. Other than it does not look as if he will escape his situation any better than Kirk did. Or, is the escape the final one for eternity? Only inchoate thoughts. Per usual you’ve set me to thinking. Maybe there is a way to make sense of some of this. I despair of ever making sense of, or understanding, the whole.