A NOTE ON CHARLIE KIRK

      The assassination of Charlie Kirk, labeled a conservative activist, is a deplorable event.  And leaders on both sides of the political divide have been quick to deplore it.  On the Republican side, however, comments have gone well beyond deploring his death.  Republicans are apotheosizing him for his political crusading and demonizing Democrats as sponsors of political language and political violence, which they claim contributed to his death.  Never mind the more inflammatory language and more frequent violence of Republicans in the past decade or so.

 

I paraphrase what is claimed but not confirmed that Winston Churchill once said, “I have wished for the death of no man, but I have read some obituaries with great satisfaction.”  I had heard of Kirk but knew and cared little about him.  Now I know more and still care little about him.  He was a young man with a wife and two children.  I regret his assassination, and I sympathize with his surviving family, grieving his death and suffering their loss.

 

But I go no farther.  He was a leader of others like him: white, male, self-professed Christian.  I credit him with being a Christian in name only.  For he was a Christian nationalist who, as he wanted a return to an America as he selectively imagined it to be before the 60s, was a bigot in every way imaginable: racist, sexist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, and anti-LGBTQ+.  However nicely he packaged himself, by himself or with his family, he was spiteful in his views of people unlike himself.

 

He is not one to eulogize.  It is hardly surprising—indeed, it is fitting—that those who have been highest in their praise of him promise less justice than retribution which perfectly accords with the hatred of others unlike him which he lived in his life and livelihood.

 

What his death means for those who do not excuse the nasty character and mean-spirited morals of a bigot because of his attractive appearance and nice manners is political retaliation by the Trump administration.  Even if it turns out that Kirk’s killer was a Democrat—though he was raised in a Christian, conservative family and might be a Republican—, no other Democrat is responsible for his action.  But Trump takes one person as representative of all persons of his or her group and promises to punish as many Democrats as he can possibly associate with this presumably Democratic killer.  If Kirk turns out to be a Republican—oh, wonderful irony—Trump will nevertheless use the language and violence shtick to attack Democrats.

To say that Trump thus represents all Republicans would be a logical retort.  But tit-for-tat is wrong.  For those who reject everything which Kirk stood for, the proper response is to carry on in their commitments to love, justice, and democracy.