The road gets steeper
Is this the new Reichstag fire? I think we can be pretty sure it won’t go well for Team Not Crazy.
Though no motive has been disclosed, the circumstances of the shooting fueled concerns that it was part of a spike of political violence that has cut across the political spectrum.
Well of course it is; what else would it be? Violent and political but not part of the spike in political violence? How would that work? I do wish journalism could skip the meaningless banalities.
Kirk was a regular presence on cable TV, where he leaned into the culture wars and heaped praise on the then-president. Trump and his son were equally effusive and often spoke at Turning Point conferences.
Bad moon rising.
Christopher Rufo seems to be hoping this event makes Trump go full Efraín Ríos Montt:
https://www.semafor.com/article/09/10/2025/kirk-who-transformed-us-conservatism-dies-after-shooting
I have family members living in the United States. We’ve worried about them now.
For extra frenzy, he was in the middle of answering questions about trans issues, and giving a remarkable impression of a stopped clock. Yeah, this is gonna be a nightmare.
I mean, there’s not a coherent thought on either side of that exchange.
I live in the Unites States. I’m worried about me now.
And, to be clear, all of us.
Elon Musk on his X account:
The Left is the party of murder
And now Trump himself along with numerous extreme-right “influencers” are stoking the fire & stirring the pot.
Apparently he was shot in the neck from a distance. That was either a very lucky shot, or the work of a well-trained marksman.
What frightens me is that I didn’t know anything of the circumstances until this morning, because the little I read about the incident last night, as I was scrolling Facebook for a few minutes before falling asleep, came from a handful of posts saying nothing but that a conservative had been shot who, in the past, had allegedly announced that the citizens of the USA enduring some gunshot casualties every year was a small price to pay for the second amendment. The posts were all calling it karma, although none were saying that he had been killed.
The level of hatred directed against fellow citizens who hold, or who are perceived to hold, different political views, is something which is terrifying; because it seems inevitably to lead to a form of civil war. It takes me back to watching the violence in Northern Ireland, broadcast almost daily on the TV news when I was growing up. The violence rarely spilled over to places outside that small province, though.
If it happens to the USA? It won’t remain there.
It may have been someone on the left who shot Kirk, who knows? One thing that we do know, is that every shooting is being blamed on “the left.” Even the shooting of the Hortmanns and Hoffmans in Minnesota is blamed on “the left” because she voted on some bill in a way that looked like she was siding with Republicans. The shooter was captured and was definitely not a crazed left wing lunatic.
The shooting at Annunciation school is blamed on “the Left” because the shooter claimed to be trans, for a time.
The truth doesn’t matter any more, does it?
While almost all of the Official Democrats I follow are being conciliatory towards the Kirk family and denouncing political violence, I know that it’s performative because that’s what democrats do. Even Gavin Newsome, who had hosted Kirk on his podcast, talked about what a nice guy Kirk was under his garbage political speech.
It could be a spark lit to justify more violence against Demoncrats, or it could have been someone who was sick of Kirk’s shit. Either way, it’s going to lead to more violence.
How old is the thin veneer of civilization? A few thousand years?
How long have we apes been bludgeoning each other with stone tools? 1.8 million years or more?
There is something almost entropic about current affairs . . .
OB @ #3:
You will always be welcome to settle/take refuge here in Australia, OB. Blog from here. Just say the word.
The whole thing IMHO lends a whole new dimension to MAGA. Make America Ghastly Again.
Just another example of his ignorance. The Left is not a party. It is a political viewpoint, characterized by a wide range of views from people who don’t agree with each other on a lot of issues. It ranges from the most moderate of leftists, through communism, all the way to the way-out-there fringe that characterizes so much of the New Left.
“Leftists” have a choice of parties, and there are a number of them who register independent, refusing to claim any party at all.
This is the sort of political ignorance that leads us to the horrific state we are in today.
And to follow up on Mike H., we need to remember that Ronald Reagan was shot by a Republican. JFK was shot by a Communist. RFK was shot by someone who had been a supporter but disliked his Palestinian positions. There is no real pattern in political shootings that says someone has to be from the other side of the spectrum. Until there is a suspect and a motive, it is premature to speculate about the shooter’s political views.
Omar – funny you should mention it – just the other day my employer/landlord was telling me that friends of hers who have lived here for decades are returning to Australia, and they in turn have friends who are doing the same. I did feel some envy.
Well Australia is the home of Roxie Tickle, and the land of women not being allowed to legally gather without men present. You’re welcome to come to TERF Island; I’ve got a spare room. And a large cat.
Mike B #9 : Humanity’s been fighting wars for thousands of years. They’ve found one of the oldest known graves of war victims at Jebel Sahaba in Sudan, which are about 13,400 years old:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2278870-earliest-known-war-was-a-repeated-conflict-in-sudan-13400-years-ago/
Modern society certainly seems more violent now than it did in (say) the 1990s. I suspect the rise of social media and a lack of jobs and community feeling among modern citizens may be partly to blame.
@ #13:
??? As Pauline Hanson would probably say at this point: Please expalin???
https://www.onenation.org.au/please-explain
https://womenspeaktas.au/2023/01/01/tasmanian-tribunal-refuses-exemption-for-lesbian-only-events/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c07ev1v7r4po
1.”Unless legislators act to restore clarity and balance, the erosion of women’s rights will continue — and lesbian voices will remain silenced in the name of ‘inclusion.’”
2.“Giggle’s legal team argued throughout the case that sex is a biological concept.
“They freely concede that Tickle was discriminated against – but on the grounds of sex, rather than gender identity. Refusing to allow Tickle to use the app constituted lawful sex discrimination, they say. The app is designed to exclude men, and because its founder perceives Tickle to be male – she argues that denying her access to the app was lawful.”
It would appear to me that the Tasmanian Parliament has a bit of work to do to stop the law from being a donkey.
@Freemage
I’m not so sure, Freemage. We tend to hear about the mass shootings I’ve seen characterized as “rampage shootings” — where the targets are chosen mostly at random, or because they symbolize something the maniac doesn’t like. School shootings are one example.
But according to one paper I’ve seen (and cannot now find) those well-publicized shootings are actually a small minority of mass shootings. Many are gang-related.
So Kirk may have been about to make a point about comparing apples to apples.
We’ll never know.