It’s hard to overstate what writing can do to help you think clearer. As I reflect on what I perceive to be a series of muddied and disingenuous responses to Charlie Kirk’s death, I’m noticing patterns that hark back to the era of The New Atheists. The “nature of debate” is on full display, and routinely, no one defining terms nor willing to be nailed to the cross of their alleged convictions.
If you want to be “reasonable,” you can start by trying to say one truthful thing after another. You don’t have to know anything else about where you’re coming from. You can start with what’s most obviously true, for you, or of your perception. For me, it’s something easy like, “I don’t give a fuck about Charlie Kirk.” That, by itself, is very true. A reactionary response is going to invoke his children, far-flung theories of political violence, and almost certainly personal attacks questioning my right to say what I say or feel what I feel.
But I don’t give you the rest of the rope to hang myself, you invent it. I care, generally, that we have an environment where people aren’t dying for speaking. Speaking, in and of itself, is no reason to kill someone. It’s not hard to understand that “speaking” and “invoking violence” or “apologetics” are different things. When you meet someone who treats those distinctions as illegitimate or confusing, if you’re me, you dismiss them out of hand. You’re not prepared to have an adult conversation and I’m not interested in engaging with your feelings.
The most compelling thing I hear is about how the fascists will use death as a pretext to escalate. I know things can always get worse, but I don’t see how we’re not already living in the midst of their endless lies and pretexts to continue trying to control and kill. It’s like I’m hearing we shouldn’t attack the Nazis who’ve taken a small town because they’ll just ramp up their efforts on a different front. Bro, we’re already at war.
In taking things line by line, I can clock “elevated rhetoric,” because no, we’re not literally at war. Nor do I wring my hands hoping we devolve into some kind of civil one. At the same time, literally, the people in power are sending National Guard troops to cities and rounding people up, deporting them without trial, and claiming national emergencies. The “highest court” in the land cosigns and invents whole-cloth justifications to destroy the entire system of accountability. An entire party spends more time defending rich pedophiles than writing policy that remotely represents their constituents. They didn’t need Charlie Kirk to die to get there.
What are you supposed to make of your individual response or responsibility to the state of affairs? I work directly, every day, with the population who is going to lose their health insurance and SNAP. You think it’s my job to preach civility when I’m trying to get people to believe in their fundamental worth and humanity while they’re under attack?
People are getting fired for posting quotes from Charlie. His words are supposed to be at once banal and about “freedom” of expression, but when you use them, you need to be punished? This transcends gaslighting. When his killer was discovered to be the whitest of the whites — gun-toting, perpetually online, with Republican parents and Mormon upbringing, who went on Charlie’s show to decry the violence of "the left" -- the vice-president. Why am I supposed to be afraid of what they’ll do “if?” They’ve been doing it in big and small ways for decades.
I also can’t help but think that we’re falling into the trap of putting things off on “leaders.” If 10 more people are killed on either side, does that mean I don’t have to think critically anymore? Does that mean I shouldn’t vote in an informed way? Does that mean I’m just at the mercy of the notion that “violence begets violence.” Does it? Does it not sometimes cause the aggressor to stop long enough that we get a chance to live peacefully again? Dozens of clichés and statements that are ringing as increasingly hollow sentiments are offered as it clicks how terrible people are at denoting the real enemy and nature of the problem.
Somewhere along the line of “social media” or “public discourse” we dropped the expectation that things needed to have evidence, make sense, or be an extension of reason and shared reality. All that began to matter was the performance. That’s leftist land acknowledgments just as much as it is fascist professions of faith. What you actually care about is how you feel and look to the tribe. It’s a tired observation, but it continues to manifest in ways that aren’t being articulated. It feels like we’re trying to address it by continuing to point at it, ridicule it, or reduce the discourse to both-sides gibberish.
How can you be more accountable? You can accept that people lie. You can accept that you are human, and you lie. You might even be lying when you don’t “feel” like you are. The lie is that you’re informed enough. The lie is that your confidence is real. The lie is that your tribe will protect you or that you belong to one above your class. The lie is that you’ve put in the work to think more deliberately and reasonably about ever-evolving topics and your place in the world. You’re stuck reacting. You’re stuck regurgitating language you have no emotional connection to nor could ever arrive at on your own.
My hatred for people like Charlie Kirk is mine. I know the kind of stain and impact they have like everyone they’ve targeted does. I don’t need to cross my fingers and trust that the fascists will do one of a hundred things I really care about. I know what a fascist is, how they operate, and what they will destroy in service to their ends. If you were honest, and not lazy, and practiced in your accountability, you would too. You wouldn’t waste your time “debating” someone’s dog-whistles and not-so-tacit endorsement of wanton death.
The unreasonable people will spend your whole life never figuring it out. Why continue sacrificing for them? Is that why you wake up every day? To be told who your god is, what to think, and what your life is worth? Your brain can’t distinguish for itself what you never create or protect it from.
