I debated long and hard about posting any thoughts about the events of this week surrounding the death of Charlie Kirk. Frankly, way too many have already been written, and a sizable percentage have been some combination of premature, biased and not fully informed.
The few I’ll attempt to contribute will likely alienate even more of you than those who have already weighed in on a couple of snippets I shared via social media, where I’ve already been deemed a psychopath, a lunatic and (gasp) a supporter of “the other side”–by folks on both of them.
To all of you who have formed such unmovable opinions–I’ve been called far worse by far better people.
Unless any of you can personally attest to needing a police escort to accompany you to and from Hebrew school on dark cold winter days and nights as I did, fearing being beaten up as I often was merely because I was an obese overachiever–the “diagnosis” the school psychologist eventually shared after questioning some of my tormentors directly–none of you have the perspective to deem my thoughts on what has motivated you to have the intractable and intense overreactions to what has transpired, both tragically in Orem, Utah on Wednesday and among our country’s “leadership” since, as uninformed. I know my own truth, you apparently don’t.
So with that framing, I’ll sum up with three words that I’ll repeat over and over until you may be motivated to, as one especially incensed person consistently threatens, “knock my teeth out”:
Words don’t kill.
A 31-year-old man, father of two small children and a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, is dead. A 22-year-old boy named Tyler Robinson (based on his life accomplishments to date, IMO he doesn’t qualify to be described as a man) is in custody and, quelle surprise, he is nothing like what our Fat Farting Fascist speculated while he breathlessly shared his speculations,apparently furiously fantasizing about Ainsley Earhardt on FOX AND FRIENDS.
The facts that we do have on the still-living boy, per the objective compilings of POLITIFACTS’ Louis Jacobson. Maria Ramirez Uribe and Amy Sherman, are frustratingly anything but supportive of those initial takeaways:
- Suspect is not the person who donated to Trump
- Robinson was an unaffiliated, inactive voter
- No evidence that Robinson is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America
- Internet finds meanings for mysterious etchings on bullet casings
And specifically regarding those casings, the troika of Poynter Institute researchers that authored this piece actually spoke to experts to help all of us amateur sleuths whose training was limited to reruns of SCOOBY-DOO and BATMAN decode those riddles:
At the press conference, (Utah governor Spencer) Cox announced the specific texts etched on four bullet casings found with a Mauser Model 98 .30-06 caliber bolt action rifle:
- “Notices bulges, OwO what’s this?” — According to the website “Know Your Meme,” the phrase “Notices bulges, OwO what’s this?” has been circulating online since at least 2013, particularly to parody online role-playing subcultures, including “furries,” a community that dresses up as anthropomorphized animal characters.
- “Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao” — “Bella Ciao” is an Italian song with antifascist roots from World War II that have made it a popular resistance song in various international contexts. Commentators, including journalists, also said it has been used in the World War II-themed video game “Hearts of Iron IV” and has sometimes been adopted, in an ironic way, by far-right groups.
- “Hey fascist! Catch!” followed by an up arrow symbol, a right arrow symbol, and three down arrow symbols — X users said the phrase and the arrow sequence comes from the game Helldivers 2, which envisions battles involving fascist-uniformed fighters. A move in that game that involves pressing a series of arrows allows players to drop a 1,100-pound bomb — the game’s most destructive weapon.
And since no one to the best of my knowledge has yet directly spoken to Master Robinson, we haven’t gotten his explanation, let alone his motive. So spare all of us your own psychological interpretations, even you do have a degree.
Here’s what we do know: Robinson apparently pulled the trigger. His personalized bullet killed Charlie Kirk. Not his words.
There’s also been a lot of whining about the fate of MSNBC’s (yes, the million dollar rebrand is still pending) Matthew Dowd, who weighed in with a knee-jerk reaction shortly after Kirk was shot and was subsequently fired by the same genius who signed off on the name MSNOW. Have any of you who are holding candlelight vigils for him considered that perhaps his greater faux pas was to chime in before Kirk’s body had even entered into rigor mortis? Would you have been as tolerant as I was forced to be when, in the wake of my mother’s sudden death from a heart attack a week shy of her 58th birthday, a couple of insensitive relatives quipped “She was too f–king fat”. Sure, it was true, but did it need to have been said at that time? Dowd would have fit in well with those folks, none of whom I spoke to ever again.
And as for the deceased himself–no, obviously I do not agree with much of what Kirk said or thought. Indeed, I found many of the receipts that Occupy Democrats and the dozens of their zealotic retweeters who flooded my inbox with multiple posts downright abhorrent. And I do get how they could hurt the feelings of those who fit the descriptions of some of the groups and ideologies he weighed in on.
But Kirk never fired an actual shot at anyone. Again, words don’t kill.
I also don’t buy for a nanosecond anyone out of either simplicity or fealty canonizing him–yes, even his most ardent young followers at Turning Point USA. And to those who want to liken him to Martin Luther King–you’re a few years off.
It took the private thoughts of a friend’s insightful wife to offer up perhaps the most original and spot on comparison one could make to a historical figure. Does the name Malcolm X ring a bell?
I’m not quite seasoned enough to actually have seen X’s provocative speeches, but in my fourth grade Queens classroom in the wake of the MLK assassination, with one of the first Negro (yes, that was the preferred designation then) teachers in our school’s history, it was required learning. Indeed, even then teachers were inclined to pass their own judgments on politically divisive activists; they just had to do it to our faces and not with their chubby fingers.
Wikipedia refreshed my fading memory on some of what X was saying at the peak of his popularity:
From his adoption of the Nation of Islam in 1952 until he broke with it in 1964, Malcolm X promoted the Nation’s teachings. These included beliefs:
- That Black people are the original people of the world[104]
- That White people are “devils”[105] and
- That the demise of the White race is imminent.[106]
- On December 1, 1963, when asked to comment on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X said that it was a case of “chickens coming home to roost.”
And to those of you too young to remember, February 21, 1965 was to him was September 10, 2025 was to Kirk:
(H)e was preparing to address the OAAU in Manhattan’s Audubon Ballroom when someone in the 400-person audience yelled, “Nigger! Get your hand outta my pocket!”[210][211][212] As Malcolm X and his bodyguards tried to quell the disturbance,[M] a man rushed forward and shot him once in the chest with a sawed-off shotgun[213][214] and two other men charged the stage firing semi-automatic handguns.[211] Malcolm X was pronounced dead at 3:30 pm, shortly after arriving at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.[212] The autopsy identified 21 gunshot wounds to the chest, left shoulder, arms and legs, including ten buckshot wounds from the initial shotgun blast.[215]
If you’ve never seen Denzel Washington’s gripping portrayal in the eponymous 1992 movie directed by Spike Lee, considering those two have just teamed up for what might be another award-nominated performance in HIGHEST 2 LOWEST now might be a really good time for you to do so, not to mention potentially a welcome distraction.
And then consider that to this day dozens of streets, buildings and memorials in his honor remain. No, not even Charlie Kirk’s minions and mentors have gotten around to whitewashing that just yet.
We can disagree with those who ramrodded the decision to fly flags on U.S. buildings at half-staff through this weekend or who wanted his body to lie in state inside the Capital Rotunda. But clearly, precedent has already been set.
I listened to Kirk through the lenses of those who blindly supported him and those who detested him. Even his most polarizing opinions were backed up with irrefutable statistics, albeit often skewed or biased to support his points. And he’d make damn sure anyone who dared to try to “prove him wrong” knew them, and at bare minimum should be armed with their own arsenal of talking points lest they risk get verbally eviscerated.
Hey, I’m guilty of the exact same thing. And I’ve been nowhere near as successful either in influence or wealth as was Kirk.
That said, I don’t mourn Kirk. I do mourn for his family, because no young wife nor toddlers should have to grow up without a loving spouse/father. And I especially mourn those of us who can’t even bring themselves to do that.
Words don’t kill. Not even mine.
Until next time…