The real problem might not be with the shooter himself, but the darkness in the hearts of those celebrating the brutal killing of a 31 year old man with two young children, those who have become what they claim to hate.
While we do not yet know who assassinated conservative activist and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk or what prompted them to commit this heinous crime, it’s clear that many who claim to be our moral superiors are really twisted, broken creatures who do not believe their political opponents are human beings. Before Mr. Kirk was pronounced dead, while he was still bleeding profusely from his neck and in a coma and while his family was still praying he miraculously survived, these stunted and twisted individuals erupted in a macabre celebration of cold-blooded murder. In an astonishing, disturbing, disgusting, despicable display, there were those who posted actual videos of themselves dancing on social media, others who accused Mr. Kirk of bringing it on himself, and still others who found a way to blame Donald Trump or conservative culture in general. So many, that the popular conservative account Libs of TikTok put together a short montage of what we can only describe as the lowlights of human nature, the darkness lurking in some hearts, “first nepal and now charlie kirk shot in utah! is something happening?” complete with a man unironically flashing a peace sign in the wake of a slaughter conducted in front of some three thousand people, “CHARLIE KIRK GOT SHOT?!?!??!” featuring a woman singing in praise of the slaughter and presumably the witnesses in the front row who might have been spattered with blood, “I’m not saying he deserved it, but I am saying God’s timing is always right,” a young woman smiles for the camera with the caption that she’d been manifesting for “it,” “Charlie Kirk was just shot in the neck at an event in Utah” with music playing and another young woman dancing in joy. Elsewhere, the assistant Dean of Students for Middle Tennessee State University, Laura Sosh-Lightsy claimed “Looks like ol’Charlie spoke this fate into existence. Hate begets hate. ZERO sympathy,” followed by a retweet of “Yep. Hate begets hate. Still no sympathy. You get what you put into the world tenfold” with the message below “I’m not celebrating the loss of Charlie Kirk’s life. Violence is not the answer. I am celebrating the loss of his message of violence in an increasingly violent world, which is partially because of him.” “Live by the sword, die by the sword. He did say that gun deaths were an acceptable side effect of gun rights,” said another. “I just want to thank Charlie Kirk for getting blown away for keeping the 2nd amendment alive and well. This is how you commit to the bit,” yet another.
Even those who weren’t cheering or blaming Mr. Kirk himself, immediately tried to claim that conservative political violence against Democrats was far worse or at least the same. As proof, they insisted that the deranged man who shot and killed state lawmakers and their spouses in Minnesota in June was a Republican and a right winger, despite that he claimed to be having secret conversations with Democrat Governor Tim Walz about assassinating politicians who might prevent a non-existent Senate run. Some dug even deeper, to shootings that had occurred years ago and which I could not even remember, anything to deflect, deceive, and rationalize before the body was even cold, the medics still soaked in his blood after trying to save his life. One even decried Mr. Kirk as an “anti-vaxxer” and hinted he should have been killed a long time ago, a podcaster for Sirius XM, Henry Zebrowski, who wrote “anti-vaxxer finally got shot.” Taken together, it was enough to prompt at least one teenage Democrat to declare his party was the “fucking worst.” Though we might like to dismiss these ravings as confined to deluded people without an audience of any kind and without any real power, those who are lashing out because they are perhaps a little mentally unstable, lonely, or whatever, the media and certain Democrat politicians couldn’t help showing the entire world their dark hearts either, even if they didn’t seem to be aware of it. In what can only be described as one of the most macabre and bizarre hours of television news in recent memory, commentators on MSNBC variously claimed that maybe some conservative had fired their gun in celebration and shot Mr. Kirk by accident, worried that someone might take over Mr. Kirk’s mission of engaging young people in conservative politics, and further that President Donald Trump would use this even somehow for something, but perhaps nothing was worse than Matthew Dowd, who was fired shortly after, when he claimed Mr. Kirk committed a weird form of suicide by karma. Rather than offering his condolences, he revealed his own perverted nature by insisting that Mr. Kirk was “one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.” “I think that’s the environment we’re in, that the people just — you can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have, and then saying these awful words, and not expect awful actions to take place. And that’s the unfortunate environment we’re in,” he added.
While some Democrat politicians said and did the right thing, others couldn’t help themselves either. As Mr. Kirk lay dying, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a man who thinks he should be President, actually blamed President Donald Trump in a hastily arranged press conference, which he darkly turned it into an impromptu campaign speech, refusing to let a moment in front of the cameras go by without slamming the opposition, though it only served to reveal his own twisted values. After insisting, “I want to express my sympathy to Charlie Kirk’s family and to Charlie Kirk,” he proceeded to ramble, admitting he had no idea what happened or why, and yet somehow in a way that defies all rational explanation save rank political opportunism at the expense of his own humanity, he know who’s fault it was. “I don’t know whether it’s political violence because I don’t know who did it … But I will say that political violence unfortunately has been ratcheting up in this country, and we saw the shootings, the killings in Minnesota — we’ve seen other political violence occur in other states. And I would just say, it’s got to stop, and I think there are people who are fomenting it in this country. I think the president’s rhetoric often foments it. We’ve seen the January 6th rioters who clearly have tripped a new era of political violence and the president, what did he do? He pardoned them. I mean what kind of signal does that send to people who want to perpetrate political violence? Not a good one.” For her part, Senator Elizabeth Warren used the killing as an opportunity to call for more gun control, despite having no idea what gun was used, much less how the unknown assassin obtained it, and then accused President Trump of “turning up the temperature.” On the floor of the House of Representatives, Democrat members refused to hold a simple moment of silence to honor the dead, with some screaming “hell no.”
Even those, including some on the right, who seemed to do the right thing and simply offer their condolences while politely asking people to turn down the political rhetoric seemed to be missing the point. First, we do not yet know a motive, but if history is any indication, there’s a reasonable chance the killer was not driven by politics in the first place. The Minnesota shooter mentioned earlier, Vance Boelter, suffered from a bizarre delusion that he was operating under orders from Governor Walz to kill Senator Amy Klobuchar, but he refused that directive and killed four others for some reason. Incredibly, we still do not know what prompted the attempt on President Trump last July in Butler, PA, beyond the fact that Thomas Matthew Crooks was a lone, desperate young man who appears to have been disconnected from everything and everyone. If we look back further in time, John Hinckley, Jr. attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981 because he believed it would impress the young actress Jodie Foster, having developed a fixation on her after seeing Taxi Driver. Even further, John Shrank attempted to assassinate former Republican President Teddy Roosevelt because the ghost of President William McKinley, who was himself assassinated in 1901, ordered him to avenge his death. If anything, the case is more complicated and perhaps more instructive for today because of the political rhetoric at the time. Roosevelt’s opponents called him a madman, a war monger, and a drunk, and the Republican Party believed rightly that his third party run would cost them the election. It would have been better for traditional Republicans in the McKinley mold if Roosevelt didn’t make it to the election, but can we remotely claim that is the real motive for a man who believed he spoke to ghosts? While I understand the impulse to believe Mr. Kirk was assassinated either for his political beliefs or his prominence in conservative circles, the truth, assuming we will find it at some point, could be far murkier and generally speaking, we should be hesitant to attribute rational reasons to irrational killers.
With this in mind, we should also be hesitant to blame either rhetoric or the vague specter of radicalization, believing that somehow some people who are already deranged are exposed to a certain phrase or thought and become killers as a result. Personally, I would argue that they are more likely to have been killers to begin with and the thought, whatever it may be, comes later. To be sure, that doesn’t mean that a full decade of labelling conservatives fascist destroyers of democracy hasn’t had an impact, but that the impact itself is more subtle and insidious because it is not necessarily associated with the assassin in question. The impact instead is on the hearts and minds of the political opposition who no longer believe conservatives are legitimate actors and who cannot seem to treat them as human beings first, ideological adversaries second. In other words, the real problem might not be with the shooter himself. It is the darkness in the hearts of those celebrating the brutal killing of a 31 year old man with two young children. While we will hopefully learn more about the assassin in the days to come, the only thing we know for sure right now is that you cannot reason or debate with whatever percentage of people are consumed with such rage and hatred they celebrate death and depravity because they believe it serves their political ends. If they can’t accept that we are human beings, there is nothing any conservative could say, ever, under any circumstances that would make them view us as having a legitimate perspective on anything. Ironically, rather than our moral superiors, people of unimpeachable compassion and empathy, they have become what they despise in a massive bout of collective psychological projection. While I am seething inside at another senseless killing and fearful of what it might cause in our already frayed country, I cannot bring myself to hate them either. I can scorn them, condemn them, pity them somehow for being the very subhuman things they decry in their political opponents, but they’re not worth hating even as they have clearly revealed who and what they are for all the world to see, their progressive hearts of darkness made plain.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 