Let’s be clear: political violence, and indeed, violence of any kind, is not okay.
But let’s not do the thing we always fucking do when someone dies and pretend like they weren’t a complete asshole. This man actively spokes against the rights (and lives) of gays, trans people, women, blacks and various other minorities, often in hateful, violent terminology.
All you really need to know about the guy is that he thought gays should be stoned and it was fine if toddlers died in school shootings because it meant he got to keep his guns.
So, no, I’ll decry violence to the end of days, but I will not shed a single fucking tear for a man who believed the murder of toddlers was fair game, and that empathy was something to be exterminated.
And don’t pretend, right wingers, like you’re on the higher path here: you did nothing when children were shot, you mocked Democrats who were shot or beaten, made fun of George Floyd and Paul Pelosi, and were upset that the kidnapping of Gretchen Whitmer was stopped before it happened.
You cheer concentration camps and openly assert it’s right and good for people to die of preventable diseases. You laud Donald Trump’s violent, divisive, bigoted rhetoric and are fine with the U.S military blowing up a boat of people without warning or due process, even when they had no actual idea who was on it.
So, yeah, spare me your false equivalence.
If you despise political violence, you do it across the spectrum, as I do – and I’ll say it again – the shooting of Charlie Kirk, no matter what he was, is not okay. If you only care about it when it’s some guy you only just realized existed because Donald Trump somehow broke the news before the rest of the world knew?
Well, then fuck you and your disingenuous sanctimony.
It doesn’t serve you, or this world, unless your only aim is more, not less, violence.
As long as it’s against the people you hate, right?
Target: 1300 words
Written: 1555 words, novel: Bad Neighbours
Read: The Carpet People, Terry Pratchett
Comics: Tomb Raider 46-49
Music: Welcome To The Pleasuredome, Frankie Goes To Hollywood