Sunday, September 14, 2025

Crossing the Line to the Point of No Return

Charlie Kirk's assassin, Tyler Robinson
There are a lot of politicians on both the Democrat and Republican sides who have denounced the assassination of MAGA Republican Charlie Kirk. There have been calls for calm. And calls for reflection about the demonization by one side against the other that has led to the kind of violence that happened to Kirk last week. I don’t think there can be any doubt that the constant demonization by both sides against the other surely contributed to what happened.

And that may have pushed Tyler Robinson, Kirk’s assassin, over the edge. But his motive was hatred of Kirk’s socially conservative politics. It has come to light that Robinson’s lover was a man who is in the middle of transitioning into a woman. The conservative values that Kirk promoted were surely opposed to that kind of sexual relationship as well as to changing one’s sex. Kirk was a devout Christian who took the Bible’s admonitions against such things seriously.

There was a time when America took biblical prohibitions like that seriously, too. A relationship like Robinson’s would never have been openly acknowledged. If it happened at all, it would probably have generated guilt and shame in the hearts of both participants. Their sexual relationship would have been kept secret. And there surely would not have been any kind of sex change. Today, both gay sex and sex change have been given society’s imprimatur. That Kirk advocated turning back the clock may very well have been the motivation behind Robinson’s assassination of Kirk.

What this ‘defining deviancy down’ has wrought is a sense that this new ‘morality’ has become entrenched. Its promotion in the entertainment industry and the mainstream media as the norm and moral, has created a culture that - in the minds of far too many people justifies the kind of deadly violence that Kirk - who fought that notion - experienced last week.

Lest anyone deny that sane, everyday people could justify killing an individual with strong influence against these new values, they might be surprised to know that there were many comments on social media expressing joy over Kirk’s death. To their credit, employers fired employees who made such comments online.

On the other hand, it is not only the left that is guilty of such violence. One might remember what happened to Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, who was attacked by a right-wing fanatic whose real target was Nancy herself. As the Democratic Speaker of the House, she was responsible for legislation that clashed with the conservative ideals animating that would-be assassin. 

Perhaps the worst instance of political violence, though,  was January 6th, when MAGA supporters held a rally outside the Capitol building, and some of the radical right broke into the building with threats of death to the vice president. That many of the protesters followed them into the building shows that they at least approved of what was happening, even if they weren’t the ones who actually broke in.

These radical right-wing conservatives feared that the left was ruining their country and that their candidate - who had been working to restore a culture based on biblical values - had been cheated out of a second term by a ‘rigged’ election. That this belief was proven false didn’t matter to them. They didn’t believe it. They wanted to ‘save the country’ and thus believed their actions that day were justified.

So, in both cases, the right and the left felt justified in using deadly violence to achieve their political aims, both believing that not doing so would ruin the country.

Exacerbating and accelerating the resort to violence is social media, which has become the most influential source of extremist political division. Even after a violent assassination, social media has shown us how far we are willing to go to advance our agenda. As in the way Kirk’s assassination was celebrated by so many people, and as in the way the president’s pardon of even the most violent protesters on January 6th was celebrated by many of his MAGA supporters.

Thing is, I don’t see things getting any better. I wish I could. But as the divisions in this country increase, so will the willingness to thwart inroads by the opposition by any means necessary. Calls for calmer heads to prevail on both sides of the political aisle will fall on deaf ears. Even those who mean it will soon fall prey to their own instincts to vilify their political opponents as a necessary component to save America from the danger of destroying the moral fabric required for what they want America to be in the future.

Will there be a civil war at some point? I don’t think so. We will not have armies shooting at each other the way we did in the actual Civil War. But in many ways, the civil war has already begun. Who fired the first shot? The answer will depend on whom you ask.

In my view, even though my values are far more compatible with one side over the other, both sides are guilty—and will continue to be.

9 comments:

  1. In addition to possible radicalization from online political discourse, there is the irony of Robinson coming from a Conservative background as well as possible religious conflicts and mental health aspects involving LDS [Latter-day Saints], though his mother is a social worker -- see below.

    This, besides the uniqueness and poignancy of the parents' dilemma of turning their son in knowing he could face the death penalty(which I think Trump termed heroic).

    As a classmate of Robinson was quoted, excepted and linked below:

    "Timothy had little to do with Robinson at Pine View High School because they moved in different circles but he said that young Mormons often chafed against the strictures of their religion, which forbids homosexuality, opposes elective abortion and bans alcohol.

    “They’re silently being eaten up inside,” he said. “I’m LDS [Latter-day Saints] too and there’s a lack of care. There’s no encouragement to open up. There’s a fear of being shamed. So people can’t get the help they need.”

    https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/tyler-robinsons-dad-parents-utah-mormons-qjtjg3fqs

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    2. The accusation and obvious implied accusation is fueled by obvious agenda but does it make sense? Because they had issue with Mormonism he went and killed a political figure from a different religion? Had he killed a Mormon minister maybe you could try it. Charlie Kirk repeatedly stated that gays as people are welcome in his movement. It is their behavior and beliefs he so strongly opposes.

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  2. make no mistake about the demonization of Trump and his MAGA supporters bears some responsibility. Such rhetoric from the right is as common as a cold day in hell

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    1. In Dantes Inferno the worst sinners in hell are frozen. Thus, fairly common as is violent rhetoric from the right.

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  3. Kirk was an exceedingly charismatic commentator, organizer, and spokesman for far-right causes. Some of those causes reeked of intolerance not only of LGBTQ, but also of Blacks, Hispanics, other dark-skinned minorities — and Jews, who, he said, exercised conspiratorial control of nonprofits, colleges, and Hollywood advanced Marxist and “anti-white” politics. (At other times in specific contexts, he defended Jews and Israel.) He argued that antebellum slavery wasn’t such a bad thing, that the mid-1960s civil rights laws should never had been enacted. He was an ideological misogynist who believed that a woman’s proper role was having children and submitting to her husband’s authority.

    Sure, he wanted to turn back the clock and restore the good ol’ days of American society. Good for Christian white people, not so good for others. He was, in short, a white nationalist.

    His assassination was a horrible event. But he wasn’t killed by Democrats, liberals, LGBTQers, leftists, Trump-haters, or Israeli agents, whose alleged complicity is now a popular talking-point on the Internet. He was killed by young man from a right-wing, gun toting Mormon family in Utah, a man who apparently had a break from reality and thereafter dropped out of school and descended into a world of fantasy role-play, violent computer games, and Groyper delusion. Perhaps he imagined that killing Kirk would be a political act. It wasn’t. It was an act of severe mental disturbance for which he will doubtless get the death penalty.

    You can’t blame LGBTQ for what he did. You can’t blame the other targets of the far-right. You can’t blame society.

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  4. Essentially agree with your post.

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  5. Far right? You mean like white Supremacist far right? I think this kind of demonization is why these kinds of things keep happening, On both sides of the political aisle.

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    1. you are correct-of course, must add availability of rifles accurate to non experts at more than a hundred yards.

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