We're not going to get to 'unity' by pretending the murdered racist bigoted demagogue was merely making political points

[Moostache]

2. Hear, hear!

Assassinations are never justfiable, murder is murder and the rule of law is sacrosanct to me. It is not to the GOP and was not to Kirk nor his ilk; who seek validation and support for their hideous beliefs of superiority ,based on anything but actual qualifications.

White skin?
You're in the club...

Disaffected male, who does not want to hear anything but "its not your fault" like Williams and Damon in "Good Will Hunting"?
You're just like "us", its not YOU that is wrong, its always THEM/THEY...

Profess verbally how much you loves some Jebus? (even though the figure of Christ would kick over your money changing tables and sooner cast you out than lift and your hideous exclusionary rhetoric up...
You're an icon...

Gleefully harm people with your words and actions and do so with a smirk and wink?
You're nearing god-status itself... or at the very least sanctification as a patron saint for "THE CAUSE"...

This shit is not new.
Its been going on since 1865 non-stop.

America never resolved its original sin of slavery for some and freedom for others while professing freedom for all - and it appears unwilling or unable to do so even now. The government "of the people, by the people and for the people" has been understood for more than a century and a half to mean not ALL the people by some, for whom they reserve the right to dole out that governemnt and those rights as they see fit.

Those who would profess "Christian-Nationalism" are neither concerned with the example or teachings of Christ, nor do they want an inclusive nation for all. They are false prophets and charlatans. Grifters and thieves. They are the very worst of humanity attempting to steal the cloak of righteousness and hide themselves behind its symbolism and the hope that gives the downtrodden and the persecuted. Ironically, they use the very beliefs of those who need it the most in order to glorify themelves instead.

They want two things:
1) the power to discriminate openly and freely, without so much as a dissenting opinion being heard or couched (except for Vance and that weird fetish of his),

and

2)false validation that what they have to feel in their soul is wrong (persecution of the weak, punching down on the powerless, siloing people to keep them at each other's throats instead of working together) is actually supported and perfectly legitimate.

They want to hate freely and persecute without conscience or dissent.
They are, were and ever shall be world without end - wrong.

Their ideology of separating and stratisfying people serves their financial masters' needs and their own desires to lord over others.
Their professed feelings of superiority and divine 'rights' are emblematic of their deep seated feelings of inadequacy - where personal or social or both.

Charlie Kirk was not a person or a life to be celebrated or emulated for WHAT he said - but his was a life (misguided and perverted as it may have been in ny eyes) that deserved the full protection and respect of a society living under the law and not under men. The rule of law has been under seige since January 6th, 2021. It was attacked by Kirk and his ilk relentlessly. It was in service to Donald Trump that Kirk wielded influence and power over the minds of the impressionable and the hurting to turn them into ideological weapons o fmass destruction. When a bomb-maker is killed by an explosion, do we feel compelled to sorrow? Should we?

When you spend your life honing weapons and preaching hatred of the "other", whatever happens to you will not generate sympathy or lionize your wasted life. He was no hero for his views or his speech or his attitudes. He also was no villain for the expression of those views, speech or attitudes. To me (and many others) he was wrong, he was arrogant, he was a bloviating gas bag of lies, half-truths and snark disquised as "intellect" and "seriousness". To others (mainly those seeking validation of their own prejudices and biases), he was nothing but the polar opposite of that.

He was in short, an imperfect human being. He may not have thought about it, while cashing the checks and living a celebrity life and pampered existence on the donations of money and power of his followers, but he did not deserve to have his throat shot out and to die gurlging in his own blood. He was an attacker of the rule of law and unwittingly an atatcker of the one thing that should bring all Americans together - equal justice under law is not a slogan or a pithy saying. It is the basis for society and the bedrock of our way of life. Kirk and others have spent ages attack that and undermining it at every turn, then claiming that they are the ones fighting for freedom.

But he DID contirbute mightily to setting the conditions for such reprehensible acts and violations of law to occur. He failed to make calm, non-violent, non-bigoted points to support his views. Instead choosing at every turn to go with inflamatory or condescending or intentionally vile statements and positions. He embodied the Trump ethos of hitting and hitting and hitting some more and never stopping - because power is all that those people see, respect and desire. The desire for power with the intent of instilling only your views on others is always a weak and evil thing. Abandoning the very principle of the rule of law in favor of temporary political advantage (even if the plan is to convert that temporary into permenent advantage by destruction of the system itself) has proven tragically to be Charlie Krik's Iron Sulfide (fool's gold).

I defend Kirk's right to say and do everything he did.
I do not mourn his loss, nor do I feel it was unfair to his family in the end either. He CHOSE to act and speak and be what he was. He KNEW that these things were not universally popular (though it is hard to say how much he drank his own kool-aid or believed he was telling them the whole truth). He KNEW that these things required him to hire added security around him, just apparently not enough nor thorough enough to match the hate he engendered along the way.

And to quote another individual who bears responsibility and blame for the state of the nation, the repitilian senator from Kentucky - "Still he persisted". He chose the life and lifestyle he lived. He accepted the risks of destroying respect for the rule of law gleefully and fully, so it is NOT different than a man or woman who KNOWS the risks of smoking cigarettes, but choses to do so anyway. His calculus was that his hate and its reactionary blowback would not reach him or his family. He took the same risks that a smoker with a family and children does when they light up anyway. He felt invincible, above reproach. He played god.

Killings and killers are never justified. Assassinations are never "OK". But false deification and beautification of evil intentions and teachings are likewise never OK. The Chip Roys and Jesse Waters of the world may feel big and bad and expelling their rage (and they have a wider reaching platform than I have) last night and today and in the near future. But they are wrong - their rage, their intentions, their words and their actions - and they should know it, especially when the blood of their messiah is yet fully washed away. An eye for an eye leaves the world half blind.

Charlie Kirk did not deserve execution in public for his views, but his actions and attacks on the rule of law should not be swept away in a fog or unearned reverance at his demise either. Further down that path lies many bodies, many deaths, much suffering and in the end? Compromise and those who would make peace instead of war, compromise instead of commands. We can choose to repudiate Kirk's killing and learn from his own mistakes, or we can allow others to repeat the same mistakes and drag the rest of us into a wide conflict and fight. We can choose to heal our fractured belief in justice and the rule of law, or we can fight about it with more deaths, more violence, more sorrow until we exhaust ourselves once more.

What we cannot escape, cannot ignore forever or pretend does not exist is this - none of us can "win" this fight unilaterally. No one side or party or ideology can "win" America. We either learn that now with tragic but limited bloodshed, or we learn it later soaked in blood and sadness and loss many times greater again. America is not one side's birth right or provence. It is the idea that men and women can live together - different from each other, different in every way imaginable, but united under the principle that the law is the arbiter and the ruler, not the men who temporarily hold sway of a majority or ability to influence laws and enforcement of them in a singular, directed manner. We compromise and communicate or we fight and kill and die until exhausted of the ire that overrides rational thought. The fight is unwinnable, the result is always going to be the same - a decision to live under law or die fighting each other instead.