Charlie Kirk

Thursday 9/11/25

Obviously Charlie Kirk was a terrible person. You know what? Most people--almost all--are terrible people. If you think someone isn't, chances are you just don't know them well enough. (And that includes ourselves with ourselves.) Or a host of reasons I needn't go into here, because they're not relevant, and that third sentence isn't the focus of this discussion.

What I see, though, is the cheering of murder in this country. The sardonic comments. Treating murder like having your revenge against the person who knocked you out early in the last game of dodge ball by returning the favor with a ball to the head.

It's really simple: Killing people is wrong. A CEO who is evil, or whomever it might be. There aren't addendums or caveats to that. "But but but" isn't a thing here.

It's like there's no reality in the world for people now. I mean, there's reality. It never goes away. It holds dominion over all, in that reality is the constant. You can try not to answer to it, but that's ultimately going to fuck you up, and when we have a whole world of people trying not to answer to it--and want it to be the other around, with reality having to answer to us--you get a fucked up world that is moving closer and closer--by the day--to unfixable. What's unfixable? Humanness will come to an end. Not humanity--humanness. We're moving to a post-human human world.

Because we're not plugged into reality. It's lost on us. We've put our backs to it. We don't recognize it. We're doing what we're doing, telling ourselves it's this and that, and reality is doing what reality does, which is being reality.

We're self-benumbed, media-benumbed, social media-benumbed, technologically-benumbed, obtuse, calloused. We almost never understand anything or its implications unless it happens to us directly. Because we don't have imagination. And selflessness. All we usually care about is ourselves, and we don't even care about ourselves well, which would working to be the best we can be mentally, intellectually, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

Who does that? Do you? Any of those things? You can't be empathetic without imagination, because empathy requires leaving your life and imagining what it'd be like to live someone else's. A part of their life. It's like writing--you're going into a character who isn't you. Your stuff doesn't matter. Their stuff does. Their stuff will affect how you see your stuff.

We're hyper-fixated on ourselves. We'll use the word "empathy" to scold and for plaudits, and attention, of course. People believe that using the word means that they have it. They know. And anyone within earshot or sight of them using it will also know--like this is a de facto law of life--that they have it.

People will watch a video of someone else being shot through the neck, and they can do this as though it were a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Doesn't faze them. They talk about it like it's a video game, and not real. Something similar happens with school shootings. There's no reason for people to have guns like they do. People say that either people kill people or else that guns are responsible, but the reality--there's that word again--is that it's both. You make anything easier to do, and more people will do it. Look how many millions and millions of people call themselves whatever they want now--writers, for instance--given that all you have to do is going on Threads and say that's what you are.

If anyone who was pro-gun and wasn't much, if at all, bothered by a school shooting, suffered the loss of their spouse, who was a teacher, in a school shooting, or their kid, they wouldn't stand before anyone, ever again--or post on social media, or what have you--and say anything other than that we need to do something wholly, aggressively, immediately different.

Can you even imagine a man who had his twin girls murdered at school, seriously maintain a pro-gun stance after? It's impossible. Because then it would have been something that happened to him.

It feels insane writing this, that it needs to be said, but killing people is wrong. There are things that we do to others that are also things we do to ourselves, because they make us less human. People are like, "No one knows the point of life," or else they say, "The point of life is to have fun while you're here!"

But I know what the point is. It's not to have fun. You can have fun, but that's not the point of life.

The point of life is to become as human as you can possibly be. To always become more human. To be more human today than you were yesterday. And then tomorrow more than today. As what a human can be.

And a lot of things help that and there are many ways to go about it. It's what art is for--truly great art, I mean. It's to help people become more human. Which is what we do when we grow, we learn, we're vulnerable, we fail and begin again, we don't give up, and, more than anything else, we do right by other and by ourselves. We model an example for people and ourselves. We try to. We create and follow our own light. We take others with us. And we learn from their light, and mix it with some of our own.

There is nothing more important that we can do than help people. And there are so many ways to do it. Every day. No matter who you are. There's something you can do to help someone. Maybe you create the greatest work of art ever for people so that they might know themselves better, or others, or someone else--their friend, their former friend, their spouse, their mom, their dad, their kid, their neighbor--or find strength, or knowledge, or hope and laugh and cry and feel more alive, and, in feeling more alive, and thinking in new ways, and revisiting old ways of thinking, become more human. When I say, The value of a work of art is directly proportionate to the amount of life it contains, this is partially what I mean.

Maybe you set aside something that has been bothering you all week and listen to someone else with their stuff. I mean really listen. Not just wait for your turn to talk. For that conversation, you can hold your stuff back and be there for them.

I've thought in the past that war was different. Killing in war isn't the same. I thought that about WWII, certainly. I still do. Given the threat to the world, to decency. To the chances of there being decency again. To humanity and being human.

But in this world? I don't believe there's any country worth your life or your love. People are worth your love. The right thing is worth you love. Doing and being the right thing is worth your love.

You should try to live a life so that you're worth your love, too. The life well lived is the life in which one loves. Love takes so many forms. You can be entirely alone and love. Because of what you do. Why you do it. Who you hope to be doing it for. You can still be decency incarnate, and goodness. Without credit. Comfort. And love in return, or love from anyone else at all.

But you can still love. You can still make sure that you are love, in that you embody what love is. And you would give of that to others. It's what you lead with. As if by a reflex, without planning or a quick check of whose eyes are on you so that you can get your credit or asking someone to take a photo so you can post to social media and get your likes. Because instead it's your nature. It's who you became.

Which didn't happen by accident. It happened because you endeavored with all of your heart, soul, and mind, to try to become more human every day of your life. To face that which was hard to face, including your shortcomings, failings, and fears. Maybe that you've been a bad person to that juncture and you had the job of your life to rip that down and begin building, and keep building, something else. To be that humble and open. To find strength when you thought every corner where strength might have been stashed had been triple checked and all rocks overturned. There's more. You need to have faith to look. No days off. Then to look the next time. And so on. You can't stop looking. Not if you're going to keep becoming more human. To the last breath. Then you see where that leaves you with whatever comes next in the world that follows or whatever it is.

And I think love is all but gone from this world. We so often do what we do--in the hijacked/co-opted/convenient name of love--for other reasons. So that we won't be alone. In order that we can have X, Y, and Z. Or simply because there aren't other/better options. And what the hell else were we going to do besides?

I guess this is about Charlie Kirk, but it isn't really, I see. That's fine. Still goes with all of that. Again, this was a bad guy, but his children didn't do anything. You might say, "Sure, but what if he didn't have kids? You couldn't say that, and then is it more permissible?"

You kill someone, or you make light of someone killing someone, or you whore your soul for attention and internet points making glib posts about someone killing someone, and you're killing yourself. Most everyone out there is already dead in all but name at this point--I'm talking in these terms of being human--so what's being dead on top of already being dead, and yet it's still true.

It's not a good way to be. And, in its way, it's not a whole hell of a lot better than how this other person chose to be.