Two disturbing murders are in the news and in divided-divisive discussion: that of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska and conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Murder was once a private matter, in the sense that the perpetrator, hoping not to get caught, does his or her horrific deed away from cameras and prying eyes.
Public murder is different. The provocation in killing someone in full public view, with many witnesses, is almost inevitably terroristic in nature. And just so, many of the mass shootings and spree killings of recent years are indeed classified as terrorism.
The stabbing of the young white woman on a light rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina, by a black man in view of other commuters, does not seem quite political even if possibly racially motivated. The terror of it is there. But is the -ism? Did Decarlos Brown really do it to change opinion or policy (that is a major determinant of terrorism)? No. It was expressive.
Of racism or hateful madness — one or both.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk is more obviously terroristic. Mr. Kirk was speaking on a university campus fielding a question about the rise of violence by trans people. And then came the bullet ripping through his neck, in view of his wife and children as well as the audience.
Both persons detained by police earlier today have been released — so, as I write this, the evil person who assassinated Charlie, in what smacks of a professional hit, remains at large.
There is something additionally ugly and troubling here. Kirk was always open to debate and dialogue. He held no political power, but he had a voice — often that of reasonableness. This was a direct terroristic attack on free speech.
Charlie Kirk’s. And yours.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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11 replies on “The Current Madness”
No group of people are ever truly of one mind; but, none-the-less, we are able to categorize people ideologically because some of their thoughts have similarity sufficient that they may be called shared. A shared thought of a great many on the American left is that they are on the verge of utter loss.
Nine years ago, they thought that they were on the brink of something quite like final victory, in which a President of their choosing was going to be positioned to appoint Justices to the US Supreme Court who would, with earlier appointees from the left, nerf the Constitution, so that nothing in it would stand in the way of a full realization of their programme. But, to their horror and outrage, the candidate of the other great tribe won that election, indefinitely delaying the sterilization of the Constitution. Still worse, even after norms were set aside to remove him from office and to block his return, he was elected again last year, transformed into a populist avenger, himself willing to violate the Constitution and other norms, but now to different ends.
And, so, the shared thinking of the American left ever more resembles that of a cornered beast.
The assassination of an office holder or of a candidate for office is abhorrent to many, but the state is itself an instrument of violence, and most people have some sense that a response of violence to violence or to attempted violence is different from a response of violence to non-violence. The political left insists, of course, that many non-violent things — including even silent passivity — are somehow violence, but we all know that this redefinition is sophistry.
In this context, the assassination of Kirk is going to backfire spectacularly. Even had this act been just that of one lone gunman, the assassination would have backfired. But the cheers from many on the left, and the sanctimonious attempts to find mitigation by a great many others on the left demonstrate to a great many people who are not on the left that the left threatens all of us with death — not just office holders, not just office seekers; all of us. If we express thoughts that they find disagreeable, then they consider us fair game, with only pragmatic considerations staying their hands. And, rather than being cowed, a very great many of us are enraged.
The cornered beast is in much greater trouble now.
Isn’t the cornered beast more likely to attack than not? The survival instinct is powerful.
That was, rather, the point. The left has become overtly and directly violent (as opposed to singing “Kumbaya” while seeking to employ the violence of the state) because the left feels cornered.
“Forty-eight percent of liberals say it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk. Fifty-five percent said the same about Donald Trump.”
When half of any group supports the murder of its opposition, it should no longer be considered a political but a violent terrorist organization.
Today there are very few private murders. Social media and ubiquitous security cameras make it very hard for a murderer to just slip away. This morning it was reported that security cameras traced Kirk’s assassin as he went down stairwells and then jumped from the building he had been in. They traced him through a neighborhood and into a wooded area where they believe they found the rifle he used to assassinate Charlie Kirk. Unless the killer had no cellphone and no social media accounts and no credit cards and he was on foot, It’s hard to remain private in a world that is so interconnected.
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” ― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes. Charlie Kirk was a conservative activist. Therefore his murderer killed him for that reason. This is known as a causal fallacy. The bombast has already begun, even from the president who immediately tried to gain some political capital by assigning blame to the ‘lunatic left.’ The motive for the killing may indeed turn out to have been political. Or it may not. We don’t have a scrap of evidence one way or another. Making highly consequential public statements in the absence of any data is not just unnecessarily inflammatory, it’s an indication of how stupid politics has made us….
One could reasonably argue that the Kirk might not have been by a leftist despite the evidence — things written on the shell casings and the more general pattern of leftist violence into which this assassination fits — but save the claims of no evidence for Bluesky.
The left have adopted a rhetorical practice of denying that any evidence exists for a disagreeable proposition that has not been definitively proved, but this practice does no more than to please the faithful.
Thanks Paul,
This is hard to bear. I anticipated much for his future. But ‘all movements have martyrs.’ I think was a quote of Saul Alinsky, who was an original and very effective organizer.
His faith touches me and I mourn for our loss of him, here on earth. And those sweet babies and their mother, may they get the support they need to move to and through tomorrows.
Yes, it is hard to bear because he seemed like such a good person and his public dialogue was wonderful — the antithesis of violence.
Didn’t see your response to the war-monger-in-chief when this happened.
“Seeking to nail down the support of California Republicans in the GOP primary, former President Donald Trump on Friday mocked Rep. Nancy Pelosi and her husband, who an assailant brutally attacked in the family’s San Francisco home last October.
“We’ll stand up to crazy Nancy Pelosi, who ruined San Francisco — how’s her husband doing, anybody know?” Trump said to a raucous crowd of California Republicans at a state party convention. “And she’s against building a wall at our border, even though she has a wall around her house — which obviously didn’t do a very good job.”
Anyone in Utah ever hear about drones?
AI-powered detection: Artificial intelligence and computer vision software allow drones to recognize and identify objects, such as people and vehicles, and distinguish between normal and suspicious behavior. This helps to minimize false alarms and focus on genuine threats.
Live alerts: When a potential threat or unusual activity is detected, the system sends real-time alerts with live video and location data to security personnel.
Pretty simple!
Security failures in Utah resulted in the assassination of Charlie Kirk!