14 september 2025
A little something I wrote yesterday. It started with Charlie Kirk, and then spiraled
into some random thoughts.
2025-09-12
Charlie Kirk
Charlie Kirk called himself a political commentator. He was a bully. He built his entire brand around demeaning marginalized groups of people. He built a very lucrative empire based on constanly putting others down. He was killed at one of his rallies at UVU right here in Utah.
Right-wing politcal commentators are leveraging his death to spin a new narrative that will only further the divisions we se in our country. They have elevated him to the role of a martyr, a master of debate and a great champion of free speech and political discourse. However, I know what he was. When a man builds his life and fortune trampling over people, it should not come as a surprise when someone finally fights back.
[!quote] What is happening to me? I'm getting what I deserve, I'm reaping what I sowed.
- Jim Carrey, Liar Liar
Violent political action is never the right answer. Because the world is complex and dynamic, killing one person will almost never solve the problem. There are always secondary and tertiary effects that are chaotic and difficult to predict. The martyrdom of Kirk should have been an obvious secondary effect of killing him. I doubt that his killer considered any other consequences. This new narrative of the far-right will have consequences of it's own that have not identified themselves and that will be much harder to predict. At some point there will be a snowball of political injustice careening down the hill, ready to explode at any moment.
Over the last six months I have gained a great appreciation of the level of ignorance. There are quite a few things that to me seem to be common sense, but to a great number of people they seem to be mysteries. Sometimes it seems like I don't even speak the same language as the people around me. Complexity is lost. Simple stories and easy answers are constantly marketed as cure-alls. People like Charlie Kirk have made vast amounts of money by selling them.
I just never realized just how great the demand for easy answers is. Time and time again, people buy into such a simplistic worldveiw, and time and again the answers are simply snake-oil. They evaporate. Until our people can face the truth, we will continue to degenerate. Accepting the truth means acknowleging the complex reality we live in, and realizing that there are no easy answers.