For days now, well, make that weeks, I am filled with deep, gut-wrenching anger and frustration. In the series I started, with a few more to come, I euphemised them as ‘disappointments’, while they are just expressions of the indignation I feel for being treated like sh*t by people who are no better than that substance in my eyes.
Then came the assassination of Charlie Kirk, raising that frustration to a new level.
I would be hard pressed to find anybody who was more measured, polite and considerate in his efforts to reach across the political divide. I watched several of his exchanges, admiring his patience when talking to the brainwashed generation.
I would be far more confrontational in the conversations and far more radical in my positions. Far less forgiving of the stupidity and the immorality of the people he was typically talking to. But I am still civil.
I am still civil in a world where the 33% of university students consider political violence acceptable and even my relatives think that I should be censored. In a world that is getting increasingly polarized, where honest communication no longer seems possible.
I am fed up with virtue signaling, murderous intolerance.
I am fed up with wannabe mass murderers parading as paragons of virtue.
I am fed up with the deniers of common sense, reason and logic.
I am fed up, above all, with the deniers of proven facts and evidence;
I am fed up with the corruptors of science and their quest for control of its meaning, their turning of science into religious dogma.
I am fed up with narratives, rhetorics, distortions, misrepresentation, insinuations, fakery and the general lack of honesty in communication.
I am fed up with being treated as the bad guy by demonstrably bad people.
I am fed up with treating ignorant, illiterate, ill-informed idiots as equals in the faint hope that I can get through to them.
If you a reader of this Substack, you should know by now how much I am preoccupied with trying to understand the causes of the political divide and the many-layered complexity of responsibility.
I was not kidding when I called my little sister a mass murderer.
I was not kidding when I called out Emily Oster asking for an ‘amnesty’ for her role in the Covid and covid-vaccine murders.
I am not kidding when I blame the West for the unnecessary deaths of over a million people in Ukraine. (post still to come)
I am not kidding when I blame the West, the ‘Palestinians’ and the antisemites world-wide for the war in Gaza.
I am not kidding when I blame the impending collapse of the Western economies, and even Western civilization on the ideas of the left.
For the longest time, I had the attitude of Charlie Kirk, hoping for the possibility of a calm, measured, reasonable exchange of ideas, the search for reasonable compromises or at least a clear understanding of our respective positions without projecting nefarious intent into each other’s position.
There is a fundamental difference between the left and the right: One can live without the other, but not the other way around. The essence of the right is freedom and independence with responsibilities, while the essence of the left is control and dependence with entitlements and privileges.
The expectations of the right have no material demands on the left, while everything the left wants is a material demand on the right. These differences are existential and the conflict between them is conceptually unresolvable. Communism and socialism inherently self destructive. Marxism and its derivatives are parasitic ideologies predicated on political power.
Many commentators point out that the assassination of Charlie Kirk is a pivotal event. The right is already hitting back with the tactics learned from the left, such as complaining to platforms about posts celebrating the violence. Media outlets are disciplining and even firing employees for offering excuses for the assassination.
Many others, too many, are using the event for further polarization, for further attacks on the right, blaming the victim for the crime.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
An old friend posted this on Facebook:
"I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure." - Clarence Darrow
Charlie Kirk believed that gay people should be stoned to death, that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a “huge mistake,” that we should legally be allowed to whip foreigners in the U.S., that Muslims only move here to destroy the country, that American Jews encourage anti-whiteness, that men should physically attack transgender people, that all women should submit to their husbands, and that Black professionals “steal” their jobs from more qualified white people.
So I replied:
Just out of curiosity, how do you know all that? You must have listened to him A LOT to collect all of this. I am not a fan, but the little I heard from him makes me doubt that any of this is true. He was a run of the mill religious conservative - and I would even venture to say: moderate.
To get this ‘source’ of the ‘facts’
"Daniel Villarreal is a longtime, award-winning journalist and editor who has written for NBC News, Newsweek, Vox, Slate, Vice News, The Seattle Stranger, The Dallas Voice, etc, etc..."
What is interesting is how the 'credentials' quote is cut short. Here is the rest:
"The Dallas Voice, (etc, etc ...) ... and numerous other LGBTQ+ publications. He has spoken at SXSW, Creating Change, Netroots Nation, GaymerX, and is a graduate of GLAAD's Voices of Color program and of the Poynter Institute's 2024 Power of Diverse Voices seminar. He is also the founder of QueerBomb Dallas, an annual non-corporate Pride event; CinéWilde, the nation's longest running monthly LGBTQ film series."
The lies, distortions and misrepresentations are all coming from a radical, full time gay rights activist. Not exactly an impartial observer.
Taking apart the sleaziness of the Villarreal accusations would be a waste of time. You would either know it already or never get it.
…. And Clarence Darrow was a radical leftist of his times. Of course he reveled in the misfortune of his enemies.
The only reason I am sharing this exchange with you is to make the point that all the vehement hatred, the lies, the distortions, the accusations and the eventual assassination of Charlie Kirk was not accidental.
Charlie Kirk was not killed because he was a radical but because he was a moderate.
A successful, well-reasoned, moderate counterpoint to the woke, postmodernist, identity politics brain-washing machines of American Universities. He was killed because his Turning Point USA was turning the tides.
As I am writing this, the news broke that his assassin has been arrested. I wonder how long it will take the left to start a legal defense fund for him.
When the Charlie Hebdo massacre happened in 2015, it was followed by a short outburst of sympathy, everybody ‘identifying’ with the victims with their “Je Suis Charlie” signs.
Did it change anything? Nothing at all. While France is still a little better than Germany or the UK, it is on the forefront of fighting American social media companies demanding more content moderation of …… wait for it…. American citizens!!!
I’m afraid that not much will happen, the trial will keep it in the news for a while then it may fade as we will switch the war from East Anglia to Oceania.
Censorship, the division, the violence will all go up.
Still, it is a personal challenge for all of us: will we, will you pick up the fight, Charlie style? Will you try to engage the brainwashed? Will you try to reason with the hysterical?
Will you be brave enough to call out the spawns of Satan for what they are?
And most importantly, will you be able to keep your calm and good humor while you are doing it? Like Charlie Kirk did.
This event, like I hope for most of us, just strengthened my resolve to fight on.
The source of my frustration, my disappointments and anger was feeling ineffectual. The feeling that I don’t make enough of a difference with these posts. That hoping for change is pointless.
But you and I are both alive. We both must do the most and the best we can. For me it means to keep writing, for you to share it if you agree and/or to share your reasons if you don’t. If there is anything that can get us out of the mess we are in, it is principled, well argued communication.
The people who pray for Charlie Kirk believe that he is in heaven. I am not a man of faith, so I cannot say where he is, but I know this:
The biggest difference between the broadly understood right (conservatives, libertarians, and Christians) and the broadly understood left (communists, socialist and liberals) is the way they see their place in this world and the next (hell, heaven or history). Conservatives believe that they have to earn their place in this world and the next; leftists believe that they are entitled to it. Charlie Kirk earned his place in his heaven.
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I wish Substack had a better editor, including one for notes and comments.
Since it does not, I had no choice but to edit the post to share my comment with Gene and, of course, myself:
Well said, as always Zork
From the Epoch Times today
___ They (Republicans in the US Congress);asked that the select committee be staffed with members and aides who have prosecutorial or law enforcement backgrounds “to deliver results” ( in response to Charlie’s assassination) and armed with full subpoena powers to trace the funding networks of nongovernmental organizations (NGO), donors, media outlets, and public officials.
“The patterns are undeniable: we are witnessing a sustained breakdown of law and order, fueled not by chance, but by anti-American ideology,” the lawmakers wrote. “We must take every step to follow the money and uncover the force behind the NGOs, donors, media, public officials, and all entities driving this coordinated attack.”___
Their response can filed under the label___ Never let a good crisis go to waste.