In this post, I am going to give readers a good chunk of basketball GOAT Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's reaction to the murder of Charlie Kirk. I sometimes think of Kareem as "the last rational man standing," often insistent on a level of simple common sense which contemporary culture has a hard time holding onto.
To get my own cards on the table: I believe that to murder Charlie Kirk was wrong. Murdering anyone is wrong. And also that Charlie Kirk, in his public life, was a bad guy -- a professional racist, misogynist, and homophobe who not only was pushing noxious ideas, but worse, organizing to give these ideas concrete power. If you think this assertion requires documentation, I give you Jamelle Bouie or Moira Donegan.
After passing along Kareem, I'll add a couple thoughts of my own on some of the commentary flying about.
Here's Kareem:
I’m not going to discuss Charlie Kirk the man or the political figure. Instead, I’m going to discuss the gleeful abuse of Charlie Kirk as his figurative corpse is dragged through the media by the Right the way Achilles dragged Hector’s corpse around the walls of Troy. The MAGA alchemists have transformed a tragic death into the political theater of clothes-rending professional mourners that diminishes not just the performers, but all of us forced to watch.One can almost hear their collective sighs of relief as they have a distraction from Epsteingate, the devastating economic news of the rise of inflation, the loss of jobs due to tariffs, and polls revealing Trump’s further drop in approval.
... Let’s start with the most obvious observation: Most political assassins or would-be assassins don’t represent any political party, any more than an avowed Christian KKK lynch mob represents Jesus’s teachings. People with severe mental health issues—like murderers, rapists, child molesters, arsonists, etc.—may outwardly profess certain beliefs, but their actions are a perversion of those beliefs.
Therefore, for anyone to publicly proclaim that the ideology they have perverted is the cause of their violence is like blaming Jesus for the lynching. Only the most simple-minded would believe this. Only the most evil would try to whip up political fervor using this accusation.
What kind of person uses this tragedy to gain political points over their adversaries? The same kind of damaged and deranged person who would assassinate someone. The assassin and the person who tries to benefit from the assassination are kindred spirits.
As usual, art is one of the first things blamed. An episode of South Park made fun of Kirk (as it has of most political figures), but an immediate backlash appeared online as some called for its cancellation (cancel culture?). The first reaction of the ignorant is to silence opposition. Why ignorant? Because if they were truly supporters of Kirk, they would have known that he openly praised South Park and thought the skit about him was “hilarious.”
But then, they don’t really care about Kirk the man—only about Kirk the political prop to promote their cause. They have Weekend at Bernies-ed him for their own morbid use.
As he does every time he needs to distract his supporters from his failures, Trump swaggers into the saloon, gets the patrons riled up on violent rhetoric, then leads them out into the streets with their torches and rope, pointing at who they should lynch. “We have radical left lunatics out there,” Trump told reporters. “And we just have to beat the hell out of them.” BEAT THE HELL OUT OF THEM!!
So, he’s condemning violence by promoting violence against innocent people. He also added, “We have to be brave,” before bravely suppressing his grief over the death of a man he referred to as a martyr so he could attend a Yankees game. So brave.
Remember, Trump is the same guy who said, when running against Hilary Clinton, “By the way, and if she gets to pick—if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks, although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.” A “joke” about assassinating Clinton? And he still got elected. Twice. Maybe that kind of rhetoric encourages people to act violently toward politicians on both sides. After all, assassination is endorsed by the president.
Trump not only blamed “the radical left” for the shooting, he also vowed that his administration “will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity, and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials and everyone else who brings order to our country.”
It might be hard to suppress your gag reflex when you consider how Trump publicly lambasted any judge who ruled against him (and that’s a lot of judges), making each of them a target for his more violent followers (like the ones on Jan. 6 who wanted to hang Mike Pence). His statement implies there is some nefarious organization, rather than the more likely lone gunman. This allows him to then investigate any group opposed to him on the possibility that they were involved. The hope is that the threat alone will silence critics.
After a moment of silence on the House floor in honor of Kirk, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who worked as Kirk's director of Hispanic engagement at Turning Point USA, stood up and shouted at Democrats: “You caused this!”
It gets worse. Utah Republican U.S. Senator Mike Lee called Kirk’s murder “a cowardly act of violence” and spouted off about how “The terrorists will not win.” ...
The sad part of these accusations isn’t the fact that they all can be logically and factually disproven: it’s that the perpetrators already know this but say it anyway because they have such contempt for their followers that they don’t think they’ll notice the stupidity of the statements.
Blaming Democrats or the Left is just a shameful attempt to use Kirk’s death as a political tool. The fiery passion in these accusations is a stage performance. The irony, of course, is that accusing anyone or any group of being responsible for Kirk’s death based on their politics riles up the violent crazies to now physically attack those being vilified. Trump and his MAGAs’ outraged finger-pointing is putting targets on people that bear no responsibility at all. If MAGA had the mental capacity to see the hypocrisy in their actions, they might feel shame; but that is an emotion they are incapable of. ...
The true agenda of using Kirk’s death as both a shroud of indignation and a loaded weapon at political rivals was clearly stated by Trump when he was asked on Fox & Friends about his plan to help bring the country back together. His answer: “I couldn’t care less.”
That about sums up his attitude toward all Americans who aren’t billionaires or who don’t vote for him. Perhaps it will be stitched onto a red cap as his new campaign slogan: “I couldn’t care less.”
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A few thoughts from me and then I'll let this topic go, though MAGA certainly will try to keep their fable of Kirk going forever.
Former Washington Post data guy and now freelancer Philip Bump opined:
Just because I saw someone mention it: There’s no reason to think that TPUSA/Kirk had a significant effect on the 2024 election. The turnout operation was non-existent and claims that they/he are the central (or even a major) cause of young voters moving right aren’t backed by any actual evidence.
TP/Kirk had a very good reason to pretend they were essential and many in the media aren’t positioned to evaluate such claims. With due modesty, I am positioned better than most.
Well maybe. That's pretty much what the data guys will always say about quantifying the impact of grassroots volunteer para-campaign efforts. He's right that the people who organize these have a financial incentive to exaggerate their effectiveness; funders want to be shown results. And in many circumstances, skepticism may be in order. But in some circumstances, knee jerk disbelief in volunteer mobilizations is probably wrong. When mobilizations operate in fertile -- that is not-already exhausted turf -- the sheer number of the newly activated volunteers and voters can marginally change the results. I've led such operations from the opposite side from Kirk. Kirk was operating in exactly that sort of terrain.
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Lisa Needham offered a perceptive thought:
... [the reason] so much praise is being lavished on Kirk is that Republicans don’t really have anyone else to admire. In the Trump era, there are no heroes.
Trump, with his tacky, mobster-esque authoritarianism, values two things above all else: fealty and malleability. People with core, immutable values, people in public service, people who would sacrifice themselves for a cause — these are not people who can exist within the modern Republican Party. As far as Trump is concerned, those people are chumps. ... Americans who gave their lives to turn back the tide of fascism during World War II? Suckers and losers, per Trump.
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I'll leave the disgusting way Republicans can be expected to mobilize transphobia, given what has so far emerged about the shooter. I fear we'll be wondering next whether MAGA really does object to murder ... Let's hope not.
