A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement

[Geno]

This is exactly what I was talking about. 

The rhetoric fuels events like this. Political propaganda is a highly-addicted drug. No one is immune to it.

I can only presume you're referring to Charlie Kirk. Yeah... I made my last post right after that happened. The whole thing was still too raw for me to comment on just yet. I typed some thoughts and then deleted them.

I'm certainly no fan of him and his rhetoric, but... god damn it, this is not who I want us to be as a country. Even putting aside Trump and his allies and Fox scapegoating the "radical left" before they ever knew who the killer was, even with the full knowledge we have now that he was a young white man from a family of Trump supporters... all that aside, a 31-year-old man is dead, his 36-year-old wife is a widow, and his 3- and 1-year-old daughters are without a dad. And for what? How is this world any better of a place now that he's gone? It really isn't.

I don't think he was a good debater. I don't think there was any sincere desire on his part to engage in civil discourse. But I still believe in his free speech and, even bigger than that, his right to be alive. I don't respect his "different views" because they weren't based on intellectual rigor or curiosity, and many of his remarks were deliberately inflammatory and divisive. He brought nothing of value to the conversation, not because he was conservative, but because he was a shock jock and a provocateur. None of that warrants a death sentence. In fact, even if we entertain the idea that he was a bad person because of the things he said (and I certainly don't think he was a saint, but I also don't discount him having nuance as a person), killing him prevented him from ever having a chance to grow into a better person. Would he have? Maybe not. But we'll never know now.

In the aftermath of his murder, I've begun unfollowing social media sites that treat his death as cause for mockery or insinuate that he deserved this. In general, I feel like I need to clean up my algorithm so that my feed is less echo chamber-y. I fucking hate politics with a fiery passion (in spite my talking about it quite frequently) and yet want to remain engaged enough that I'm at least aware of what's happening in our world, including what is happening to marginalized peoples who don't have the privilege of tuning everything out. At the same time, I don't want to be the left-wing equivalent of the red pill smart boys and MAGA conspiracy theorists. I just want us all to be human, and to respect each other's humanity--with our words, and most especially with our actions.