At the ground level, Charlie Kirk’s killing was the result of hate. But the view from thirty-thousand feet reveals that it was also due to the cowardice of an entire political body.
An exchange on Fox & Fiends September 12th:
Ainsley Earhardt (Sean Hannity’s wife): “Because we have radicals on the right as well. We have radicals on the left. People are watching all of these videos and cheering. Some people are cheering that Charlie was killed. How do we fix this country? How do we come back together?”
Trump: “I’ll tell you something that’s going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime. They don’t want to see crime. Worried about the border. They’re saying, We don’t want these people coming in. We don’t want you burning our shopping centers. We don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street. The radicals on the left are the problem, and they’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy, although they want men and women sports, they want transgender for everyone, they want open borders.”
A few days ago, someone I know personally accused me of using my Facebook account to spread hate. The kind of hate that culminated in Charlie Kirk’s murder. And this very same person is a supporter of the man in quotes above.
We still don’t know yet exactly where Charlie Kirk’s killer lands on the ideological spectrum. But based on everything I’ve read thus far, he’s no lefty. I won’t even try to pigeonhole him with any precision until I know more.
Yet the President of the United States, even after this punk was captured and his social footprint made public, STILL told a right-wing audience yesterday that the source of violence in this country is coming from “the left.” That they’re “vicious and horrible.”
No, sir. A major source of violence in this country is the 47th President of the United States.
Trump knows perfectly well what he’s doing. He’s been doing it since long before the “birther” days. He goes on Fox and tells bald-faced lies about the Democrats, knowing full well that he’s fomenting violence. And then when that violence erupts, as it inevitably will, most notably on January 6th, 2021, he accuses his target of causing it.
He’s the firestarter-in-chief.
I know there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of this ever happening, but I have this dream scenario: a prominent Republican Senator, someone Trump respects, someone like John Thune or now that she’s a short-timer, Joni Ernst, goes up to the White House and tells him:
“You know Mr. President, for the sake of YOUR legacy, you really should consider dialing back on the divisive rhetoric. Last week, we lost Charlie Kirk, next week it could be a school bus full of children. Not saying you’re wrong about it being those damned radical leftists, but what if the historians write that you are to blame? Do you really want to be remembered for that?”
Hell, it could even be a Fox executive, Murdoch himself, or even his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Try reasoning with him. Tell him that his lies and divisiveness will be remembered long after Mar-a-Lago is underwater.
Yeah, I know. Never gonna happen. I’ve dealt with enough narcissists in my day to know that.
But I’ll never forget that day, when 51 years ago last month, Barry Goldwater and John Rhodes marched over to the White House and told Nixon TO HIS FACE that he had to go. That they weren’t going to support him in impeachment. They appealed to his sense of history and his legacy. They made it about salvaging HIMSELF. And it worked.
But alas, Donald J. Trump is no Richard Milhous Nixon. Nixon may have been a paranoid liar and a crook, but he was nobody’s fool. He listened to his two fellow Republicans, weighed the situation, and ended it.
Once upon a time, before the days of comity in politics fell out of favor—thanks largely to the efforts of one Newt Gingrich, the United States Congress actually functioned as outlined by the Constitution. Mostly.
The men (and far fewer women than today), knew what was expected of them. They also weren’t as beholden to special interest groups as today’s Congresspeeps are.
Do you know what else Republicans had back then that’s absent today? C-O-U-R-A-G-E. An actual ratio of one-spine-per-person, and they knew how to use them. It was those collective spines that made government function. Not perfectly, but at least it wasn’t a subservient body of sycophancy. I’ve seen slugs with stiffer spines than today’s GOP members of Congress.
At the ground level, Charlie Kirk’s killing was the result of hate. But the view from thirty-thousand feet reveals that it was also due to cowardice. The cowardice of an entire political body that can’t find it within itself to tell their flawed leader to stop the lies for the sake of the entire nation… as even Richard Nixon did when push came to shove.
We need more of that shove.
Honorary crash test dummy for Hammocks R Us, intrepid toxicity tester for Laphroaig Distillery, mobile Javaslinger, moonshiner in training, part time writer, part time foodie, part time flirt, ponderer of all things Cosmic, hot sauce aficionado, skeptic of conspiracy theorists, challenger of balderdashery, antithetical to all things Trump, Fool Emeritus from Whatsamatta U, three-time champion over corporate evil, downtrodden survivor of the Coulter Wars, psychotic women, cancer, heart disease and my own poor judgement.
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