The name Charlie Kirk was known. But that was it, from hearing him a few times. They were more than enough for me. Few were the issues on which Charlie Kirk and I agreed. Few there could have been. But, he had the right to say what he did, no matter how much I differed. Now he’s gone, and battles rage about the forces responsible for his foul murder. May his soul rest eternally.
Charlie Kirk, like a speeding fatal projectile, has gone from rightwing hero to newest Republic martyr. Heralded in death, the manner of it. He is now bigger in death’s embrace, than he was in life. Alive, he made crowds swoon. He couldn’t be intimidated into silence. Now his memory is being sanctified. Heroes are found for ever-ready halos.
I understand Republicans consecrating him. A martyr for conservative values; the new America’s standard-bearer. Depending on how it is looked at, and who is doing the looking, many saw strains of greatness in what Charlie Kirk represented, projected, with such singular passion. His great blend of conviction and vision about what a New America should be at its core, on its face. Greatness longed for; a distinction in an interconnected world that has now lost its power to welcome, inspire. Who is called? Who isn’t, who shouldn’t be… And who shouldn’t even be allowed to remain.
I appreciate, even endorse, the Republicans for heralding their fallen Spartan. But leaders in the Roman Catholic Church, an organization plagued and decimated by its own self-destruction, and inaction? How to fathom Cardinal Dolan, who saw a modern-day St Paul. Perhaps, what Timothy Dolan should prioritize is that thick predatory darkness that paralyzes a once preeminent organization. Dolan introduced a layer of mystery to Charlie Kirk’s passing that is akin to those layers of blindness hobbling his own Church. A Church that is about immigrants and fraternity and equity. Like Kirk, Dolan has been gifted with a moral universe, which entitles him to speak freely. He did.
Freedom of speech, that most hallowed of amendments. Who killed it? Why kill it? Who fears it, resists it? Everyone loves freedom of speech. But, there’s the irony, closer to hypocrisy, when most from that same loud crowd has a problem with free speech, when exercised in an unblinking, unfiltered, and unstoppable way. The pros who utilize their right to free speech have become an endangered species. Charlie Kirk’s fall stands as a man victimized for his beliefs, such as they were. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel (more on him later) was another who got felled by foul winds, for his comments on Kirk. This isn’t the America that I know.
Charlie Kirk is gone, but his memory isn’t going anywhere. Jimmy Kimmel was gone, but is back. How does the Federal Communications Commission gets so worked up that its chairman actually threatened the American Broadcasting Corp? Free speech or a free-for-all that developed into a firefight?
Everyone is as one with Evelyn Beatrice Hall’s 1906 memorializing of Voltaire’s thinking, until they lose interest, or their own interests are under the gun. Recall: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Nowadays, notwithstanding such grand commitments, the practice is to surround, suffocate, scorch, skewer, then submerge in a barrel of tar (or quicklime) those whose words and positions don’t meet with approval. What happened to disagree without being disagreeable? Or dangerous? Or, to take this to the limit, deadly? Let me help: that’s done and gone. It is either for (150%), or against by any number that could be counted, or imagined. There is neither discussion nor negotiation. For or against, with no middle ground, no meeting of the minds. A nuke obliterated that middle square.
Before America turned, Guyana was already there. It isn’t what is said, nor how it is said. In Guyana, it is who is the speaker, or writer. Ask me, and be ready for a library. There’s democracy, a constitution, the shadowy realm of cyberspace and the protections of cyber laws. In spite of those, the plunderers of free speech are princes of the land. They prosper from deciding who should write where, who shouldn’t. They demand and command, erect the barriers relative to who should neither speak nor write, nor present, anything at all. Those with the levers in Guyana (like the FCC chair in America) say it’s democracy, freedom, and what should be. No one has died yet, though some have been victims of character assassination. It’s a short step from that kind to the one that drips red. Charlie Kirk died in Utah for being who he was. Here there are those who prefer that Guyanese stand for nothing. With that there is grappling, resisting.
