I admit to being somewhat culturally disconnected. In an insane world, it’s a staying-sane strategy. To paraphrase Lincoln, I can do something about some things all of the time and something about other things part of the time, but I can’t do everything about everything any of the time. I do what I can, and let the rest go.
By nature, I’m an optimist, but optimism in our times is hard to maintain. Sometimes, it comes down to believing that for at least the next day things will be OK. But in a world of random and not-so-random violence, even that’s expecting a lot. The kids at Evergreen High and Charlie Kirk were likely thinking it was a good day until it wasn’t.
I had to research Mr. Kirk and his views. Before last week, I’d never heard of him or Turning Point USA. That may seem unlikely in a world where the microscope of media is focused seemingly everywhere, but I try to stay away from the microscope. One of my staying-sane tools is my internet motto: “Don’t click through.” But Mr. Kirk’s murder is hard to not know about, even if one follows news as lightly as I do.
Trump, Musk and company are blaming the “Dems” for Kirk’s death, but suspect Tyler Robinson — who has essentially confessed — comes from a deeply Republican family. Republican Utah governor Cox said Robinson was “indoctrinated with leftist ideology,” but has presented no real proof of that. Robinson is registered to vote as “unaffiliated,” and didn’t even vote in recent elections, though his family noted that he has lately become “more political.” He also seems to have “checked out,” abandoning a significant academic scholarship and spending hours playing video games. Robinson also has some sort of relationship with a transgender person, and evidence is that he believes violence is a solution. What we don’t know is what he was trying to solve, and he isn’t talking. We only know he has been radicalized.
The more I learn about this, the more bizarre the whole thing becomes, but we are living in bizarre times. As noted.
This is somehow connected — in my mind, anyway — with another bizarre incident the day after Charlie Kirk died. A friend and I were breakfasting in a Montana café, discussing a book he’s writing. The waiter realized we might be there for a while and told us that the local Republican committee would be meeting there soon. We were fine with that, knowing we would be done soon, and even if we weren’t, we felt we wouldn’t be disturbed.
But we were. The man charged with setting up the meeting walked in armed with two Glock 9-mm pistols with extra-capacity clips (one on each hip), a can of mace and a combat knife strapped to his chest. Accompanying him was a woman who scowled at us continually for the next fifteen minutes while we finished our talk.
Their paranoia was palpable. The attitude of the woman seemed to be “I don’t know who you are, so I’m going to glower you into leaving.” The attitude of the armed man seemed to be “Mess with me and you’re dead.” He was wearing a t-shirt inscribed, “Scratch a Liberal and a Fascist Pops Out,” a message so contradictory as to be ludicrous. Still, how was I to react?
If I had known nothing more than what I could see and feel by their presence, I would have been revulsed — and I was — but the thing I found most distressing was that he was a member of the local Republican committee; not just the party, but local GOP leadership.
He too has been radicalized, hovering out on the far-right edge of political thought, and I learned from my friend that he was considered locally as mentally unstable. No kidding? And here he was in a public venue armed to the teeth while representing one of the two dominant political parties in the US.
Somehow, all this is tied together. Kirk, Robinson, the guy with the t-shirt, fascism, Trump and his allies and the American gun culture. Kirk, in defending Second Amendment rights, seemed to think that school shooting victims were acceptable collateral damage, a price paid for being able to “protect ourselves from the government.” That seems as insane as the guy with the t-shirt and pistols.
Charlie Kirk’s death is being politicized, but bottom line is that he died at the hand of someone who didn’t like his beliefs and he left a wife and two children. They are also collateral damage, victims of our obsession with guns and willingness to accept violence as a solution.
When will we learn?
A few thoughts on insanity and the death of Charlie Kirk.
I admit to being somewhat culturally disconnected. In an insane world, it’s a staying-sane strategy. To paraphrase Lincoln, I can do something about some things all of the time and something about other things part of the time, but I can’t do everything about everything any of the time. I do what I can, and let the rest go.
By nature, I’m an optimist, but optimism in our times is hard to maintain. Sometimes, it comes down to believing that for at least the next day things will be OK. But in a world of random and not-so-random violence, even that’s expecting a lot. The kids at Evergreen High and Charlie Kirk were likely thinking it was a good day until it wasn’t.
I had to research Mr. Kirk and his views. Before last week, I’d never heard of him or Turning Point USA. That may seem unlikely in a world where the microscope of media is focused seemingly everywhere, but I try to stay away from the microscope. One of my staying-sane tools is my internet motto: “Don’t click through.” But Mr. Kirk’s murder is hard to not know about, even if one follows news as lightly as I do.
Trump, Musk and company are blaming the “Dems” for Kirk’s death, but suspect Tyler Robinson — who has essentially confessed — comes from a deeply Republican family. Republican Utah governor Cox said Robinson was “indoctrinated with leftist ideology,” but has presented no real proof of that. Robinson is registered to vote as “unaffiliated,” and didn’t even vote in recent elections, though his family noted that he has lately become “more political.” He also seems to have “checked out,” abandoning a significant academic scholarship and spending hours playing video games. Robinson also has some sort of relationship with a transgender person, and evidence is that he believes violence is a solution. What we don’t know is what he was trying to solve, and he isn’t talking. We only know he has been radicalized.
The more I learn about this, the more bizarre the whole thing becomes, but we are living in bizarre times. As noted.
This is somehow connected — in my mind, anyway — with another bizarre incident the day after Charlie Kirk died. A friend and I were breakfasting in a Montana café, discussing a book he’s writing. The waiter realized we might be there for a while and told us that the local Republican committee would be meeting there soon. We were fine with that, knowing we would be done soon, and even if we weren’t, we felt we wouldn’t be disturbed.
But we were. The man charged with setting up the meeting walked in armed with two Glock 9-mm pistols with extra-capacity clips (one on each hip), a can of mace and a combat knife strapped to his chest. Accompanying him was a woman who scowled at us continually for the next fifteen minutes while we finished our talk.
Their paranoia was palpable. The attitude of the woman seemed to be “I don’t know who you are, so I’m going to glower you into leaving.” The attitude of the armed man seemed to be “Mess with me and you’re dead.” He was wearing a t-shirt inscribed, “Scratch a Liberal and a Fascist Pops Out,” a message so contradictory as to be ludicrous. Still, how was I to react?
If I had known nothing more than what I could see and feel by their presence, I would have been revulsed — and I was — but the thing I found most distressing was that he was a member of the local Republican committee; not just the party, but local GOP leadership.
He too has been radicalized, hovering out on the far-right edge of political thought, and I learned from my friend that he was considered locally as mentally unstable. No kidding? And here he was in a public venue armed to the teeth while representing one of the two dominant political parties in the US.
Somehow, all this is tied together. Kirk, Robinson, the guy with the t-shirt, fascism, Trump and his allies and the American gun culture. Kirk, in defending Second Amendment rights, seemed to think that school shooting victims were acceptable collateral damage, a price paid for being able to “protect ourselves from the government.” That seems as insane as the guy with the t-shirt and pistols.
Charlie Kirk’s death is being politicized, but bottom line is that he died at the hand of someone who didn’t like his beliefs and he left a wife and two children. They are also collateral damage, victims of our obsession with guns and willingness to accept violence as a solution.
When will we learn?
A few thoughts about geology and resistance
She looked at the cliffs rising abruptly on both sides of the river and asked, “What did this?”
Adventures with Jeeper the Compass (An R-rated version)
In the past three days, I have tested Jeeper mightily. Sunday, I drove over Vermillion Pass (elevation 6050), the last half mile before the summit being a nasty stretch of frozen slush with ruts. It was one of those places that inculcates spontaneous prayer. Verbalized. And, bad, bad words. Two
A few (still relevant) thoughts from the past on television
In the face of the media storm of the last few weeks, one of my editors asked me for something written before the internet took over our lives. Here ’tis, only slightly modified. When I was 9 years old, we got a television and three grainy avenues of information gained
A few thoughts on insanity and the death of Charlie Kirk.
I admit to being somewhat culturally disconnected. In an insane world, it’s a staying-sane strategy. To paraphrase Lincoln, I can do something about some things all of the time and something about other things part of the time, but I can’t do everything about everything any of the time. I
A few thoughts on five days in sandals.
A shower of sand fell from my pack as I emptied it today. The stuff is whiteish, with gray and tan highlights. In my mind, there’s a big mystery about the color. Why is it almost white when near all the stone surrounding it is some permutation of black? The