The fact Kirk encouraged his supporters to pay his attacker's (and ultimately murderer's) bail is, to me, effing insanity. But then that's US gun control and the self-destructive 'living on the knifes-edge' mentality of these people in a nutshell ain't it? So I can't really claim surprise anymore. Despair, anger and frustration, yes, but not surprise.
As much as I vehemently disliked the man and as much as the utterly vile, borderline rage-baiting stuff he regularly spewed did as was intended and enraged me and so many others, that didn't mean I wanted him shot and killed for it, for god sakes. Verbally destroyed to his face, his worldview systematially dismanted, his career turning to dust in some way, but not shot. If for absolutely no other reason than what something like this would do to his family. Lord knows how they are processing what's happened, but I wouldn't wish this sort of nightmare on them or any family.
For a few years at least now I've come to believe that there is no peaceful route to the US getting to a much better place; this will only come through a significantly violent reckoning that makes them wake up and realise what they are doing now is not right or sustainable.
To quote An Inspector Calls: "We don't live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when, if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish. Good night."
For at least 9 to 10 years I've harboured a similar view (ever since Trump refused to say that he'd accept the result of the 2016 election if he lost): that the only way the US is getting to a much or even moderately better place is through internal, bloody conflict that rips the country apart from the inside and permanently - one would hope - burns a reckoning right into the country's collective consciousness like a cattle prod to the backside. I would normally hesitate to go right for the jugular and say 'Civil War 2', but now I really can't see any other way out of this hole they've dug themselves in the long or even medium-term. This has been building for decades and one quick glance at US history shows us widespread violence
is gonna explode outward one way or another. It's a matter of when, not if at this point.
Whatever happens, it ain't gonna be pretty and Trump and his flying monkeys are actively & openly pouring napalm and gunpowder onto a already raging refinery inferno. That is their entire
modius operandi, they
live for moments like this where they can repeatedly torch the Reichstag and blame everyone else for it when they were the ones that lit the flames, fanned them, lit and and threw in a box of oily rags and tossed in a keg of gunpowder just to be absolutely sure.
Yep. The US is cooked. Was a slow roast, but it's cooked.
America has always had a strain of violence in its politics (must admit I found people on both sides saying violence has no place are perhaps lacking in an understanding of their own political history!) and maybe it felt similarly febrile in the 60s when you had a variety of political assassinations. But right now it feels like there's something very sick in the soul of America at the moment and this violence is going to escalate in all sorts of ways. Very very grim.
It's either due to willful ignorance, a lack of education or simply not knowing any better. Or a combo of all three, which is more a little worrying, but sadly tracks with what we see on a regular basis. Just with presidents alone, 4 have been assassinated since the nation's founding - Lincoln in 1865, James A. Garfield in 1881, William McKinley in 1901 and JFK in 1963 - and there have been countless other attempts on other presidents aside from on Trump himself last year, the first of these unsuccessful attempts was on Andrew Jackson in 1835. Yeah, it goes back
that far. Arguably the most serious failed attempt was on Reagan in 1981.
Simply put, the US's political history has been steeped in blood and violence for much of it's existence and for one to assert that violence has no place at all is at best ignorant of their own history or is at worst partaking in history revisionism to suit their own ends. Of course, I'm not advocating for political violence, of course not. I'm merely stating historical fact, something Trump, his goons and every fascist leader that's ever lived treat as if it were tatamount to treason.
