Charlie Kirk was shot this week. He didn't deserve it. He had a right to say what he thought. But a gunman took his life.
The initial response from most folks on the left was that it was terrible. Obama, Biden, Clinton, Jefferies and other big name Democrats expressed sorry at the event and care for the family. The pundits I listened to also thought it was a terrible thing and felt bad for the family.
What did we hear from the right?
President Trump was sad to hear and immediately blamed the 'radical left lunatics'. When asked if he was going to try and unite the country, he was unwilling, saying he didn't care to.
The right from Congress through social media blamed it on all the Left. Right wingers on social media called for civil war on the Democrats and the Left. It was because of "trannie ideology" that it happened. HBCU received threats and had lockdowns.
Stewart Rhodes of the Proud Boys (and Jan. 6th seditionist) called on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and declare martial law and declare the political left as terrorists.
Stephen Miller, Trump aide, calls for the dismantling of the Democratic Party and structures.
Elon Musk calls the Democratic Party the "party of murder".
There were cries for the shooter to get the death penalty.
Then the shooter, Tyler Robinson, who was turned in by his father and a pastor, was found. He was a white man, raised in a Republican, MAGA home to a religious family that had guns. Well, the right quieted. I think the threats to the HBCUs stopped. Calls for the death penalty stopped. Nothing stopped Stephen Miller who again demonized the Democrats, as did Trump. There is evidence that Tyler was a groyper. He has a roommate where he attends school who transitioning to female, but we don't know much about that relationship yet. We were also told he lives with his parents.
While the right wants to blame Democrats and the Left for the violence, I believe they very much fostered violence in this country. The level of violence and nastiness in political discourse dramatically increased with Trump's first term and is going up again.
www.theguardian.com
There is an opinion piece on The Daily Kos this week that is interesting:
The right, since Trump went up that escalator in 2015, has been emboldened to demonize the left. Trump has normalized a nasty bully style of debate, that while it pleases his base, it is driving America's foreign allies away, and causing financial harm to the US.
And the US is being financially harmed by Trump's tariffs and bully behavior. Bankruptcies of farms are jumping up in numbers, and we are in a recessions, though not officially yet. All that tariff money he claims has come in- that is from US importers and now by Americans dealing with the higher prices. Canada isn't paying them. China isn't paying them.
Will Trump's base blame the Democrats when the economy crashes and food is scarcer? Probably.
The initial response from most folks on the left was that it was terrible. Obama, Biden, Clinton, Jefferies and other big name Democrats expressed sorry at the event and care for the family. The pundits I listened to also thought it was a terrible thing and felt bad for the family.
What did we hear from the right?
President Trump was sad to hear and immediately blamed the 'radical left lunatics'. When asked if he was going to try and unite the country, he was unwilling, saying he didn't care to.
The right from Congress through social media blamed it on all the Left. Right wingers on social media called for civil war on the Democrats and the Left. It was because of "trannie ideology" that it happened. HBCU received threats and had lockdowns.
Stewart Rhodes of the Proud Boys (and Jan. 6th seditionist) called on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and declare martial law and declare the political left as terrorists.
Stephen Miller, Trump aide, calls for the dismantling of the Democratic Party and structures.
Elon Musk calls the Democratic Party the "party of murder".
There were cries for the shooter to get the death penalty.
Then the shooter, Tyler Robinson, who was turned in by his father and a pastor, was found. He was a white man, raised in a Republican, MAGA home to a religious family that had guns. Well, the right quieted. I think the threats to the HBCUs stopped. Calls for the death penalty stopped. Nothing stopped Stephen Miller who again demonized the Democrats, as did Trump. There is evidence that Tyler was a groyper. He has a roommate where he attends school who transitioning to female, but we don't know much about that relationship yet. We were also told he lives with his parents.
While the right wants to blame Democrats and the Left for the violence, I believe they very much fostered violence in this country. The level of violence and nastiness in political discourse dramatically increased with Trump's first term and is going up again.
Charlie Kirk’s death raises fears of ‘beginning of a darker chapter’ for US violence
Social media and widespread availability of lethal weapons make this era more dangerous than the 1960s – and the violence may increase
In the first six months of 2025, more than 520 plots and acts of terrorism and targeted violence occurred, affecting nearly all US states and causing 96 deaths and 329 injuries. This is a nearly 40% increase over the first six months of 2024, according to data from the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland.
Mass casualty attacks, where four or more victims were killed or wounded, increased by 187.5% in the first six months of 2025 compared with the same period last year. Michael Jensen, the research director at START, wrote on LinkedIn in late August that “the warning signs of growing civil unrest in the US are evident” in the group’s data........
On Friday, on a Fox program, Trump was asked how to fix the country, given there were radicals on the right as well.
“I’ll tell you something that’s gonna get me in trouble but I couldn’t care less,” Trump said. “The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime. … The radicals on the left are the problem. And they’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy.”
Calls on the right for war, revenge or retribution could lead to more violence, Baumgartner said. “All it takes is somebody with a grievance and a gun or a grievance and access to some sort of weapon, and you have a recipe for more violence. It doesn’t take an army to inflict violence on people,” he said.
There is an opinion piece on The Daily Kos this week that is interesting:
They created this violent world. We're just forced to live in it.
Right-wing organizer Charlie Kirk was murdered in cold blood Wednesday. The weapon wasn’t a handgun or hunting rifle. The�single, long-distance shot�appears to have come from�a military-grade ...
www.dailykos.com
Right-wing organizer Charlie Kirk was murdered in cold blood Wednesday.
The weapon wasn’t a handgun or hunting rifle. The single, long-distance shot appears to have come from a military-grade rifle. And that matters—because if it were up to liberals, weapons like that would be illegal to own.
If it were up to us, gun violence wouldn’t only matter when conservative royalty is killed. It would also matter when Democratic legislators are murdered, and especially when schoolchildren are slaughtered.
But it’s not just the guns. It’s the climate that President Donald Trump and his allies have built. Scholars call it “eliminationist rhetoric”: the idea that political opponents aren’t simply wrong, but evil, dangerous, and must be eradicated. It’s language that leaves no room for disagreement or coexistence, only destruction.
The right, since Trump went up that escalator in 2015, has been emboldened to demonize the left. Trump has normalized a nasty bully style of debate, that while it pleases his base, it is driving America's foreign allies away, and causing financial harm to the US.
And the US is being financially harmed by Trump's tariffs and bully behavior. Bankruptcies of farms are jumping up in numbers, and we are in a recessions, though not officially yet. All that tariff money he claims has come in- that is from US importers and now by Americans dealing with the higher prices. Canada isn't paying them. China isn't paying them.
Will Trump's base blame the Democrats when the economy crashes and food is scarcer? Probably.
