... that seems to have fallen over our beautiful Earth.
One of the worst parts of tonight, beyond the tragically obvious, has been for me the way the media has seen fit to report the news. It's astounding to me how many publications presented Charlie Kirk as a "Trump ally" and "right-wing activist", not because those words are untrue, but because of the images they evoke. Far right. Wow, that means he must've been a Nazi, right?
We gotta be real careful with the words we use, because indeed, words have tremendous power.
Right wing. Far right. Gun nut. - All suggest a less-than-great chap, so then, maybe someone who got what was coming to him just a tiny bit.
Gun nut. One must wonder about the psychopath who decided to take the life of a 31-year-old father-of-two.
Naturally, the right/conservative side is up in arms, and rightly so. Or more like, up in prayers. This is a prayer-heavy type of scene, despite a fondness for the 2nd Amendment. As for the lefties? Are they celebrating? Do they gloat about the "poetic justice" of a gun nut being shot dead? I'm sure there are some.
Inevitably, we return again and again to the same moronic arguments that ruled much of the Covid-19 pandemic - you're free to do and say what you will, as long as you do and say what I do. Charlie Kirk held strong views on guns, abortion, traditional family, religion, and of course, politics. He was responsible for winning Donald Trump the youth of America during the presidential campaign, having much sway with younger people (due largely to his keen rhetoric and sharp wit). He said what he thought.
Alas, we live in a world where certain individuals have taken it upon themselves to dictate what constitutes right- and wrong-think, and behind them, an all-too-eager mass of the kind that would've told on you gladly for harboring a Jewish family under the floorboards.
People love telling people what to do, and by some terrible nightmare, we live in a world where they have been empowered to do so. That, in itself, is not new, but the trouble seems to me, we delude ourselves in thinking we're quite evolved. Indeed, quite free.
The pandemic basically meant years of people engaging in "right-think" trampling the rights of those who dared disagree. All on the basis of "why should your rights matter when you don't do as you're told". It's the same kind of person who would gloat in the wake of this terrible tragedy.
People with minds too narrow to understand that a planet where people are murdered, arrested, fired, or in other ways punished for speaking their minds and exercising their rights is NOT a planet anyone sane would want to live on.
Sadly, it seems the more we live, the more salient "First They Came becomes".
What a lot of people failed to grasp during Covid was that it does not matter that today they are not punishing your particular view point, ideology, creed, or sexual orientation. The important thing is that somebody's freedom is being impinged upon (quite extremely, as in the case of Charlie). And a world where one man isn't free is a world where none of us are free. If you only stand up for the privileges of people with the same ideology, religious inclination, or sexual preference as you, you are not a free thinker. You are a cultist. A sectarian.
To even suggest that a young father deserved to die for speaking his truth suggests to me a world so malevolent and dark, I am sorry (and terrified) to inhabit it.
Rest in peace, Charlie Kirk. What a senseless, cruel act.
