Well-written and argued, but you haven't quite convinced me about the flags-at-half-mast issue.
Mainstream cultural institutions have been celebrating the life of Charlie Kirk as if he was some great American hero, when in fact he was a partisan political commentator who was purposefully, consciously rude and offensive to people he disagreed with.
And, fair enough - there's no rule that says you have to be polite. Politics ain't beanbag, as they say. But expecting Americans who were often the targets of this media figure's scorn and disdain to stay quiet while our cultural institutions hold him up to be a figure we should all revere and celebrate is asking too much, in my view.
I think the situation would be fundamentally different if Kirk had been an elected official. But as a media figure (and an avowedly brash, rabidly partisan media figure at that), I don't think it makes a lot of sense.
What if Mehdi Hasan had been shot? Would they be flying flags at half-mast in Alabama? Almost certainly not. I think it would be weird for them to be flying flags at half-mast in NYC! Hasan is a partisan, argumentative, and often-rude political commentator. To state the obvious, this does not mean it would be ok to shoot him! In fact it would be quite bad! It would be an attack not only on him and his family but on the fabric of American democratic society! But is it cause for lowering flags to half-mast? I think we'd find that kind of weird, and I know that there would be a lot of pushback.
Your footnote argument that "political assassinations are an attack on the fabric of our democracy that harms us all" was somewhat persuasive, but I think the only way to show that is to make it very explicit. Absent that, it feels like a celebration of his life rather than mourning political violence in general.
I would attribute at least some of the “Kirk was bad, actually” posts to be pushback against what they saw as the beatification from the right.
To be very clear, the smart and decent thing (and not all that difficult) was to just shut up and let those folks eulogize their guy. But I don’t necessarily think it was all some milder version of “he had it coming.”
The right is acting like Tom Hanks died but it’s more like Rush Limbaugh died. Expecting liberals or even non-political Americans to go along with with this ruse is what’s causing the pushback. Josh gets the root cause wrong.
Regardless of the person's views or accomplishments I think political assassinations should be considered a sad day for the nation and justify a flag at half-mast.
Yeah, as I said, I found this argument somewhat persuasive, but as I also said, the way to do that is to make it clear that’s why the flag is lowered. In the absence of making this clear, and in the context of other displays of beatification (as Chris said), it seems like the flag lowering is happening in honor of Charlie Kirk and not in mourning of political violence.
Again, I’d challenge you to think about how you would feel about Mehdi Hasan being assassinated and flags being lowered as a result. At the very least, i expect that you’d recognize this would be quite controversial .
I don’t disagree with anything you say here, but there is another side to this coin. Was there a similar poll while Biden was president? Were Republicans, both in office and not, respectful when Paul Pelosi was attacked with a hammer? Were the flags lowered when a D legislator and her husband were murdered for political/ideological reasons?
It’s easy to be magnanimous when you hold power. Your message above should be listened to, but what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Here are a couple polls from the Biden years that show similar results, that liberals/Democrats are more likely to end a relationship over political views or just generally find it more stressful to spend time with people with different political views:
I don't know about most Trump voters, but Trump, Trump Jr., Elon Musk and a whole host of Republican candidates and elected officials mocked it or claimed it was some kind of setup or conspiracy.
They are people who are massively powerful and influential, including the guy who is now president and using the force of government to go after people he doesn't like.
Very few people support political violence, no more 5% of the public if that. Unfortunately, the current president is part of that small group.
What gives me pause here is that you don’t remember it, which probably means you weren’t paying attention. Again, Barro’s advice is good, but only if it applies to EVERYBODY. Good for the goose, good for the gander.
Barro’s article was not about polling. It used polling to support some of his argument. He discussed much more than polling. One core message in the article is that the judicious choice of words (and I would add civility) is useful. To all of us. Barro points out that there have been people who have been injudicious in their words following
the murder of Kirk. I pointed out that there were influential Republicans who were injudicious and uncivil in their words following the attack on PPelosi. Neither points were about polling or voters.
You, perhaps inadvertently, were focused on polling of voters. That particular sentence of mine had nothing to do with polling or voters. It was about statements. I did not assume you were trying to allude the point in an inapropos statement of polling, and you made no mention of remembering the unkind reactions to Pelosi’s attack. To any rational person, it would seem (the verb I used) that you did not recall.
And perhaps my comment has garnered likes because it’s just common sense.
You specifically asked "Was there a similar poll while Biden was president?" and I took the time to answer. Instead of acknowledging, you deflect and lie.
Obviously, you weren't asking in good faith and instead thought you had some kinda gotcha for Josh, when you really didn't.
What's important about this article is Josh is calling his tribe out. Josh is a Democrat, although a moderate Democrat. He's working to cut off the rough edges of his own tribe and creating a mirror for them.
He can't effectively speak to the Republicans because the are basically not listening to him. We need more people like him on both sides of the aisle. Besides, if you read his piece carefully, he's not letting the Republicans off the hook, he's using their flaws to point out how hypocritical it is for Democrats to behave similarly.
We need more people like him on both sides, calling out the issues on their tribe and holding up mirrors. I was happy to see Ted Cruz come out against the government pressure on Jimmy Kimble while condemning the statement. We need more of this.
Josh this is a fantastic piece and a much better version of thoughts I was trying to untangle in my own head this week, as I suspect many others were too.
This is a good piece and I think most of the points are pretty valid. Two things though.
First, some non-trivial percentage of the pushback on Kirk's ideological views comes not from liberals feeling spontaneously compelled to offer their opinions in response to his death, but rather in response to the highly orchestrated and over the top lionization of Kirk by right-leaning media outlets, which in many cases can be easily rebutted by directly quoting objectively vile things Kirk has said (and no they are not all taken out of context). Like you, I'd probably prefer that everyone just keep their mouths shut. But in a lot of cases I think it's pretty hard to blame them for speaking up.
Second, I guess I'm as baffled by your analysis of Kimmel's remarks as you seem to be by other peoples'. As I hear it, he's criticizing the president and his defenders as being more focused on potential political fallout from the shooters' then-unknown political identity ("whoever shot this guy, it sure as hell wasn't one of us!") than on the grief they claimed to be feeling (and which one presumes they would be feeling). Simple as that. I note you actually cut off the end of Kimmel's quote, so this reading doesn't really come through in your piece. But I just don't see how it's an unfair criticism of the individuals at whom it's directed, much less an offensive or inappropriate comment on Kirk himself.
As always, I did find your piece as a whole to be insightful and useful, which is why I subscribe.
Yes it was stupid for anybody, right or left, to be talking about motive before we knew anything. A lot of MAGA types not only did that, but was too busy trying to leverage political advantage out of the event to express much genuine grief, which was Kimmel's point, and which was (darkly) funny.
Indeed, one should not gratuitously speak ill of the dead; however, other than on the fringes, that is not what is happening. Rather, the right is eulogizing Kirk by omitting some of his key views and failing even to quote Kirk's own words, thus misleading those not so familiar with the Kirk oeuvre. Much of the negative writing about Kirk seeks to correct these incomplete and misleading statements. For example, none of the paens to Kirk discuss his belittling of the "brain processing power" of Black women, specifically including Michelle Obama and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. They do not mention his advocacy of bailing out Paul Pelosi's attacker. They do not discuss his characterization of the Civil Rights Act as "a huge mistake," or his 2023 description of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as "awful," and "not a good person," after describing King years earlier as a "hero." When the dust clears, many Americans will be sorely ignorant about Kirk due to the misinformation on the right.
"many Americans will be sorely ignorant about Kirk due to the misinformation on the right."
So? Was it important that Americans understood his views prior to his murder? If not, then I don't see how it's relevant now. I certainly don't recall liberals insisting that it was important to correct the record on Charlie Kirk's views a month ago.
When George Floyd was murdered, his past arrests and felony convictions weren't relevant. All that was relevant was that he was murdered. And that criminal past didn't stop people on the left from eulogizing him.
Yes, it is essential because they are using his views to recruit people now. I would have corrected the record on Charlie Kirk any time. That said, I support (and always supported) the right of people like Kirk and, say, Ann Coulter to speak to audiences of all stripes. That is our Constitution.
They've always been using his views to recruit people. What do you think was the whole purpose of Turning Point USA?
It only really works if liberals respond to some of the dumb eulogization of Kirk with the same anger and vitriol that the deranged left-wing campus protestors responded with that helped fuel his rise in the first place.
I don't disagree about the reaction of some liberals, but I have some other disagreements. I'm often a critic of the left and have been for a while, but I feel like this is getting out of hand. The reaction from literally anyone of any relevance in Democratic Party circles has been unequivocal condemnation of what happened and not excusing it in any way. To find people acting the way you describe, you have to be glued to social media. I certainly don't condone that behavior, but they are people who don't matter and have no power or influence. That's especially true if you're talking about Bluesky. As you wrote earlier, it's great for keeping away the worst people on the left and I agree.
In real life, very few people are acting that way, even those who are quite liberal. For what it's worth, in my own experience, everyone I have spoken to who is of my political bent is horrified by what happened and that was all they had to say. A vast majority of them had never heard his name before last week. It's easy for those of us who are highly politically engaged to forget, but we're all very weird.
Regarding some liberals not having a normal reaction to Kirk's shooting, they're hardly alone in that. Just look at the reaction from the right-wing influencer and podcaster world. Many of them, including people with huge followings, have said we're in a state of civil war and the left wants them dead. I'm not trying to do whataboutism or excuse anyone on the left from their bad acts, but we have to keep things in perspective. There are way more people who are MAGA than there are political hobbyist liberals.
Then there is the reaction from Trump and Vance with the former using this awful event as an excuse to go after his opponents. What happened with Kimmel is going to keep happening and it's going to get worse unless or until Trump is successfully beaten back. Vance told listeners to snitch on people to their employers to they would be fired. None of that is how a normal person would or should react to what happened.
> But if Kimmel doesn’t think they’re mistaken, why would their insistences be “desperate” “characterizations”?
A: Because MAGA's insistences *were* urgent and desperate. Before anyone had any strong clues about motivation, MAGA-world set right to work at blaming the Left vigorously. Kimmel's statement is rightly read as agnostic on the motivation and a correct observation about the political messaging stakes. Was the left urgent and desperate too? Some yes. Should Kimmel have mentioned this as well? Not necessarily, because a comic's job is to punch upward and it's the right that has all the institutional might and well-tuned propaganda apparatus now. And, he does stand with much of his audience on the left side of the divide.
> Why would they constitute “new lows”?
A. Because they were jumping out of the gate to exploit a personal and cultural tragedy for political gain.
It is understandable for the left to focus some attention on Kirk's message because otherwise his objectional political views get folded in and normalized as part of the heroic martyr story. Agreed, that effort can be seen as insensitive, but sensitivity to being insensitive is liberals' burden. The right's superpower is their f--- you attitude about norms and feelings. Liberals think that is bad for society, but are struggling over the tension between upholding values and doing what it apparently takes to win.
A comic’s job is primarily to be funny, not “punch.” (This is Stewart’s fault and gives us the godawful Oliver). This wasn’t any recognizable sort of a joke.
You're right about a comic's job. One way to be funny is by mocking idiocies of the powerful. Rather than a joke proper, Kimmel's barb was one note in a routine that made highly resonant points (to his audience) with humor.
As someone who lives as the sole Democrat in a family of MAGA Republicans, I sympathize because we all somehow get along. That said, your argument implicitly assumes that MAGA is a normal political party, that it shares the same basic commitment to the American Project that we all have taken for granted our whole lives. But that is not necessarily the case and shapes the Left's response to who are more interested in their side "winning" than in politics and who seem unlikely to accept elections they lose
"Political views" covers a lot of ground. If you cut off someone because they constantly harangue you with hateful bs (the MAGA Uncle Scenario, I believe it's called) are you really cutting them off for their "political views"? If someone thinks blacks and gays are subhuman and don't deserve any rights, what's the point of maintaining a relationship, especially if you're black or gay? Someone on the left thinking trans people deserve civil rights is very different from someone on the right thinking trans people should be designated as terrorists.
Thought-provoking perspective for sure. What happened is horrific. I wonder if some of the need to point back to Kirk’s own words and the hurt he’s caused so many is a reaction to the reality that when other politically violent incidents happened - the Hortman murders - there was a deafening silence from Republicans? Including the President who purportedly said he could call and offer condolences but “it would be a waste of time”. Does it seem somehow that one murder is more deserving of mourning than another? And perhaps that comparison whips up added anguish? All violence is wrong, no matter the motivation.
Some Republicans had appalling reactions to the Hortman murders, most notably Sen. Mike Lee. In terms of the public reaction though, I think a key difference is the extremely public nature of Kirk's killing. He was shot in front of a crowd of thousands, on video that has probably been seen by tens of millions of Americans. The video I think very understandably intensifies the public reaction and the trauma that's inflicted on the public. I don't think state or local officials had an affirmative obligation to choose to lower flags (they're not governed by the president's order) but I think to the extent they do make that choice, it doesn't need to be thought of as an endorsement of Kirk's body of work -- it's about mourning a very public attack on our polity (or at least we can choose to think of it that way.)
I disagree with you on the intent of the flag lowering for sure, given it has been followed by the idea of adopting Sept 14th as a national holiday in his honor. That would seem to be an endorsement of his work, not just mourning. My whole point is the hypocrisy of it all. One sided nature of expressing regret and horror over violence. Again, all violence is wrong.
Peripheral to the main point of the post, but if you drift into the wrong part of Substack you find that BlueAnon is very real. There are notes or articles with hundreds or even a few thousand likes (a lot by Substack standards, more than the far right ever gets) expressing the view that the Trump assassination was staged or that the 2024 election was rigged. The difference with the Republicans is that for now, it's almost impossible to find Democratic elected officials who believe this stuff. The occasional Cynthia McKinney or Jamaal Bowman arises in the party but they are rare and fleeting.
It is perhaps natural that people furthest from power will be the most prone to believe conspiracies, and perhaps it is a fluke that MAGA is now in power in the US and there is hope that the post-Trump GOP will contain people with non-conspiratorial views. Or maybe the American left will take the path of the American right. Who knows.
Fantastic piece, and this is my first time reading about Jain's poll and follow-up analysis. While I would never personally cut-off anyone because of their political views, I've still always known that "we" are different, given that we consume far more politics and news than could possibly be healthy for our well-being. But the 40% - 11% split on this issue is staggering, and is really making me reassess the thickness of a bubble I've already presumed to be impossibly thick.
That said, I do detect a bit of irony in your second footnote. Here you spend an entire article (correctly) lecturing liberals on the fact that endlessly obsessing over Charlie Kirk's past quotes is missing the point and just makes us look weirder than we already are. Yet at the same time you are obsessing over the entirely irrelevant distinction of whether or not Kimmel intended to say Robinson "was" MAGA, or was simply observing that MAGA wanted to characterize him as anything but prior to any evidence emerging. I do not understand why you feel the need to continue hammering this point when the much larger issue of state-sponsored censorship remains present and frightening.
Kimmel’s language was sloppy but his implication was clear. He’d somehow convinced himself that groypers really had done it - or worse, didn’t believe it, and wanted to convince his viewers.
I have said for years that politically my beloved fellow liberals (all Democrats) have appeared unable to find their asses with their collective both hands, but now fear that many similarly are unable to find their respective souls.
I was honestly surprised at the genuine impact this had on many friends on the right. More than the normal shock of a televised murder. More than the loss of a beloved entertainer. They took this personally.
I guess I’d have felt that way about Obama circa 2009, but that’s by far the exception for me. But a lot of sensible adult people felt this loss incredibly deeply. They’re not faking this.
They’re expressing it in terms of his Christian witness, his free speech advocacy, and his role as a “good faith debater” of campus kids. I won’t say this to my friends, but I have some trouble buying all that - since these folks never talked about any of those things, even in the abstract.
What I do believe is that they identified with Kirk - as a sort of champion for their side. A happy warrior in Reagan’s mode, he could be genuinely kind and gracious to the hapless blue-haired undergrads he “debated.” But I think the bigger thing was that Kirk was very good at delivering short-form content that Owned The Libs. He invigorated a youth movement on the right, in a way that included that delicious red meat, but didn’t make you feel as gross as Trump, Bannon, or Carlson.
Someone pointed out on bluesky or twitter that many people on the right had a somewhat sheltered view of Kirk. I.e., they had heard about him generally as a Christian, etc., as you relate, without ever having heard his more hateful views. When confronted with actual quotes, they were shocked.
Excellent article, Josh. I've read a variety of pieces on the topic over the past week, but yours is the best so far.
I am friends with quite a few people who tend towards the moral danger zone you describe. One of them is an 80-something old-school Democrat, and he brought up the subject with a "It was wrong that he was shot, but..." (when he then preceded to list a bunch of Kirk stances he disagreed with; probably recited from MSNBC or similar). Sorry, you lost me at the "but" there. I always thought Liberals were defenders of ideological of liberalism, but that's becoming a harder observation to hold these days.
As always, super-smart, level-headed Josh Barro has quite interesting and compelling things to say...
Nevertheless, two sentences, not in connection with each other, point to something at the bottom-- at the split root of our present-day American (not just political) context. He writes, "...we need to be able to share a sense of national identity with people whose values might differ from our own in important ways..."
And later, "...if nearly half the electorate is in breach of your social contract, it’s not much of a social contract."
I don't share a sense of national identity with members of my own family, nor do we follow anything like the same social contract, much less millions of Americans with more toxic views than theirs. And I know I am not alone in this, and the responses (on social media, in person or via text/email) to Charlie Kirk's murder and Jimmy Kimmel's "situation" bear this out.
We do not share a sense of national identity. We have language, the memory (i.e. past) of our shared experiences and vitriol.
I don't know a way forward. I do not have goodwill towards some of my sisters and their (longstanding) repellent views about Trump and women, Trump and immigrants and Trump as, in their words, "an honest broker". It's all utter BS, and these are people I know the best and love the most. I wouldn't mention this here if I remotely thought we were the only family/community like this.
I don't know a way forward, and I'm pretty sure no one here does, and no one else does, either. It doesn't matter what the left or right say and do; the other "side" ignores super-smart level heads, and is gleefully happy to elevate the worst of us.
There have been moments over the last year where I have felt crazy and alone in my perspectives, and then Josh, you always seem to send out a thought provoking piece that feels like an eloquent encapsulation of the thoughts running through my mind.
The one piece of this that has bothered me the most IS the fixation on what the shooters political leanings were. As you eluded, there is not a single example of someone who attempted or committed an assassination who also held sane, logical political platform, so why are we looking for one here? What 'side' he was on is irrelevant. What's scary is that our politics have created an environment where now a series of unstable people in short succession have decided that violence is the only answer.
And our obsessiveness with talking about them, publishing their photos everywhere, picking their lives apart, looking for deeper meaning in their actions and feeding into whatever deluted fantasy they had for legacy, will only create more of them.
We should all fear that. What this guy did is abhorrent. Any argument otherwise or "whataboutisms" makes our country more dangerous.
Never in my life have I been more hesitant to discuss a modern day event with friends and family, for fear of their perspective. It may be the most divisive event I've experienced. Our country cannot sustain like this.
I have stolen your moniker of "reluctant liberal", but after the last few weeks, I don't know how to classify myself anymore.
Thank you as always, especially now, we need brave and balanced perspectives like yours.
Well-written and argued, but you haven't quite convinced me about the flags-at-half-mast issue.
Mainstream cultural institutions have been celebrating the life of Charlie Kirk as if he was some great American hero, when in fact he was a partisan political commentator who was purposefully, consciously rude and offensive to people he disagreed with.
And, fair enough - there's no rule that says you have to be polite. Politics ain't beanbag, as they say. But expecting Americans who were often the targets of this media figure's scorn and disdain to stay quiet while our cultural institutions hold him up to be a figure we should all revere and celebrate is asking too much, in my view.
I think the situation would be fundamentally different if Kirk had been an elected official. But as a media figure (and an avowedly brash, rabidly partisan media figure at that), I don't think it makes a lot of sense.
What if Mehdi Hasan had been shot? Would they be flying flags at half-mast in Alabama? Almost certainly not. I think it would be weird for them to be flying flags at half-mast in NYC! Hasan is a partisan, argumentative, and often-rude political commentator. To state the obvious, this does not mean it would be ok to shoot him! In fact it would be quite bad! It would be an attack not only on him and his family but on the fabric of American democratic society! But is it cause for lowering flags to half-mast? I think we'd find that kind of weird, and I know that there would be a lot of pushback.
Your footnote argument that "political assassinations are an attack on the fabric of our democracy that harms us all" was somewhat persuasive, but I think the only way to show that is to make it very explicit. Absent that, it feels like a celebration of his life rather than mourning political violence in general.
I would attribute at least some of the “Kirk was bad, actually” posts to be pushback against what they saw as the beatification from the right.
To be very clear, the smart and decent thing (and not all that difficult) was to just shut up and let those folks eulogize their guy. But I don’t necessarily think it was all some milder version of “he had it coming.”
The right is acting like Tom Hanks died but it’s more like Rush Limbaugh died. Expecting liberals or even non-political Americans to go along with with this ruse is what’s causing the pushback. Josh gets the root cause wrong.
I think the focus must be on how you specifically react to this tragedy, and ignore what the Right is doing.
Regardless of the person's views or accomplishments I think political assassinations should be considered a sad day for the nation and justify a flag at half-mast.
Yeah, as I said, I found this argument somewhat persuasive, but as I also said, the way to do that is to make it clear that’s why the flag is lowered. In the absence of making this clear, and in the context of other displays of beatification (as Chris said), it seems like the flag lowering is happening in honor of Charlie Kirk and not in mourning of political violence.
Again, I’d challenge you to think about how you would feel about Mehdi Hasan being assassinated and flags being lowered as a result. At the very least, i expect that you’d recognize this would be quite controversial .
I don’t disagree with anything you say here, but there is another side to this coin. Was there a similar poll while Biden was president? Were Republicans, both in office and not, respectful when Paul Pelosi was attacked with a hammer? Were the flags lowered when a D legislator and her husband were murdered for political/ideological reasons?
It’s easy to be magnanimous when you hold power. Your message above should be listened to, but what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Here are a couple polls from the Biden years that show similar results, that liberals/Democrats are more likely to end a relationship over political views or just generally find it more stressful to spend time with people with different political views:
https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2024/08/16/4aa50/2
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/28-of-americans-say-its-stressful-to-spend-time-with-friends-or-family-with-different-political-views-new-yahoo-newsyougov-poll-finds-205210635.html
I couldn't find any polling that suggests Trump voters overall were in some way disrespectful towards Paul Pelosi after his attack.
I don't know about most Trump voters, but Trump, Trump Jr., Elon Musk and a whole host of Republican candidates and elected officials mocked it or claimed it was some kind of setup or conspiracy.
Sure, but in the context of polls and general public opinion, those are only a handful of the tens of millions of Republican voters in the country.
They are people who are massively powerful and influential, including the guy who is now president and using the force of government to go after people he doesn't like.
Very few people support political violence, no more 5% of the public if that. Unfortunately, the current president is part of that small group.
I am *specifically* responding to the question of polling that Josh referenced in his article.
You are the only one to use the word “voters.” Barro hasn’t. I haven’t. No one but you.
The poll you and Josh referenced surveyed voters
Trump mocking Pelosi attack:
https://youtu.be/Poy9EWSmEfQ?si=--iFsucTE9ecSui4
Clay Higgins, Trump,Jr, Mark Robinson, Charlie
Kirk conspiracies on PPelosi attack.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/31/conservatives-disinformation-paul-pelosi-assault-00064208
https://www.politifact.com/article/2022/oct/31/misinformation-fuels-false-narratives-about-attack/
AI Bannon’s War Room false flag comments.
What gives me pause here is that you don’t remember it, which probably means you weren’t paying attention. Again, Barro’s advice is good, but only if it applies to EVERYBODY. Good for the goose, good for the gander.
Barro is policing his side of the aisle.
I never said I don't remember it. It's disappointing that you resort to lying and it's disappointing you get likes here for lying.
You’ve become hostile. There’s no need to be.
Barro’s article was not about polling. It used polling to support some of his argument. He discussed much more than polling. One core message in the article is that the judicious choice of words (and I would add civility) is useful. To all of us. Barro points out that there have been people who have been injudicious in their words following
the murder of Kirk. I pointed out that there were influential Republicans who were injudicious and uncivil in their words following the attack on PPelosi. Neither points were about polling or voters.
You, perhaps inadvertently, were focused on polling of voters. That particular sentence of mine had nothing to do with polling or voters. It was about statements. I did not assume you were trying to allude the point in an inapropos statement of polling, and you made no mention of remembering the unkind reactions to Pelosi’s attack. To any rational person, it would seem (the verb I used) that you did not recall.
And perhaps my comment has garnered likes because it’s just common sense.
You specifically asked "Was there a similar poll while Biden was president?" and I took the time to answer. Instead of acknowledging, you deflect and lie.
Obviously, you weren't asking in good faith and instead thought you had some kinda gotcha for Josh, when you really didn't.
What's important about this article is Josh is calling his tribe out. Josh is a Democrat, although a moderate Democrat. He's working to cut off the rough edges of his own tribe and creating a mirror for them.
He can't effectively speak to the Republicans because the are basically not listening to him. We need more people like him on both sides of the aisle. Besides, if you read his piece carefully, he's not letting the Republicans off the hook, he's using their flaws to point out how hypocritical it is for Democrats to behave similarly.
We need more people like him on both sides, calling out the issues on their tribe and holding up mirrors. I was happy to see Ted Cruz come out against the government pressure on Jimmy Kimble while condemning the statement. We need more of this.
bob
Josh this is a fantastic piece and a much better version of thoughts I was trying to untangle in my own head this week, as I suspect many others were too.
This is a good piece and I think most of the points are pretty valid. Two things though.
First, some non-trivial percentage of the pushback on Kirk's ideological views comes not from liberals feeling spontaneously compelled to offer their opinions in response to his death, but rather in response to the highly orchestrated and over the top lionization of Kirk by right-leaning media outlets, which in many cases can be easily rebutted by directly quoting objectively vile things Kirk has said (and no they are not all taken out of context). Like you, I'd probably prefer that everyone just keep their mouths shut. But in a lot of cases I think it's pretty hard to blame them for speaking up.
Second, I guess I'm as baffled by your analysis of Kimmel's remarks as you seem to be by other peoples'. As I hear it, he's criticizing the president and his defenders as being more focused on potential political fallout from the shooters' then-unknown political identity ("whoever shot this guy, it sure as hell wasn't one of us!") than on the grief they claimed to be feeling (and which one presumes they would be feeling). Simple as that. I note you actually cut off the end of Kimmel's quote, so this reading doesn't really come through in your piece. But I just don't see how it's an unfair criticism of the individuals at whom it's directed, much less an offensive or inappropriate comment on Kirk himself.
As always, I did find your piece as a whole to be insightful and useful, which is why I subscribe.
Kimmel was half right as of the time he said what he said. MAGA *was* desperately trying not to be associated with the killer. BUT SO WAS THE LEFT.
We didn’t know, but any objective guess would’ve put it no less than 70/30 chances that this guy was leftist (probably higher).
It was an idiotic thing for a left-leaning figure to say at the time. And not even funny.
As it turns out, MAGA was fortunate enough to be right, and Kimmel was up there on his petard.
Yes it was stupid for anybody, right or left, to be talking about motive before we knew anything. A lot of MAGA types not only did that, but was too busy trying to leverage political advantage out of the event to express much genuine grief, which was Kimmel's point, and which was (darkly) funny.
Indeed, one should not gratuitously speak ill of the dead; however, other than on the fringes, that is not what is happening. Rather, the right is eulogizing Kirk by omitting some of his key views and failing even to quote Kirk's own words, thus misleading those not so familiar with the Kirk oeuvre. Much of the negative writing about Kirk seeks to correct these incomplete and misleading statements. For example, none of the paens to Kirk discuss his belittling of the "brain processing power" of Black women, specifically including Michelle Obama and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. They do not mention his advocacy of bailing out Paul Pelosi's attacker. They do not discuss his characterization of the Civil Rights Act as "a huge mistake," or his 2023 description of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as "awful," and "not a good person," after describing King years earlier as a "hero." When the dust clears, many Americans will be sorely ignorant about Kirk due to the misinformation on the right.
"many Americans will be sorely ignorant about Kirk due to the misinformation on the right."
So? Was it important that Americans understood his views prior to his murder? If not, then I don't see how it's relevant now. I certainly don't recall liberals insisting that it was important to correct the record on Charlie Kirk's views a month ago.
When George Floyd was murdered, his past arrests and felony convictions weren't relevant. All that was relevant was that he was murdered. And that criminal past didn't stop people on the left from eulogizing him.
Yes, it is essential because they are using his views to recruit people now. I would have corrected the record on Charlie Kirk any time. That said, I support (and always supported) the right of people like Kirk and, say, Ann Coulter to speak to audiences of all stripes. That is our Constitution.
They've always been using his views to recruit people. What do you think was the whole purpose of Turning Point USA?
It only really works if liberals respond to some of the dumb eulogization of Kirk with the same anger and vitriol that the deranged left-wing campus protestors responded with that helped fuel his rise in the first place.
Not angry, except about the idiot who murdered him. Trying to prevent it from further destroying our country.
Then that's all there is to it. No need to obsess about people on the right being weird.
I don't disagree about the reaction of some liberals, but I have some other disagreements. I'm often a critic of the left and have been for a while, but I feel like this is getting out of hand. The reaction from literally anyone of any relevance in Democratic Party circles has been unequivocal condemnation of what happened and not excusing it in any way. To find people acting the way you describe, you have to be glued to social media. I certainly don't condone that behavior, but they are people who don't matter and have no power or influence. That's especially true if you're talking about Bluesky. As you wrote earlier, it's great for keeping away the worst people on the left and I agree.
In real life, very few people are acting that way, even those who are quite liberal. For what it's worth, in my own experience, everyone I have spoken to who is of my political bent is horrified by what happened and that was all they had to say. A vast majority of them had never heard his name before last week. It's easy for those of us who are highly politically engaged to forget, but we're all very weird.
Regarding some liberals not having a normal reaction to Kirk's shooting, they're hardly alone in that. Just look at the reaction from the right-wing influencer and podcaster world. Many of them, including people with huge followings, have said we're in a state of civil war and the left wants them dead. I'm not trying to do whataboutism or excuse anyone on the left from their bad acts, but we have to keep things in perspective. There are way more people who are MAGA than there are political hobbyist liberals.
Then there is the reaction from Trump and Vance with the former using this awful event as an excuse to go after his opponents. What happened with Kimmel is going to keep happening and it's going to get worse unless or until Trump is successfully beaten back. Vance told listeners to snitch on people to their employers to they would be fired. None of that is how a normal person would or should react to what happened.
> But if Kimmel doesn’t think they’re mistaken, why would their insistences be “desperate” “characterizations”?
A: Because MAGA's insistences *were* urgent and desperate. Before anyone had any strong clues about motivation, MAGA-world set right to work at blaming the Left vigorously. Kimmel's statement is rightly read as agnostic on the motivation and a correct observation about the political messaging stakes. Was the left urgent and desperate too? Some yes. Should Kimmel have mentioned this as well? Not necessarily, because a comic's job is to punch upward and it's the right that has all the institutional might and well-tuned propaganda apparatus now. And, he does stand with much of his audience on the left side of the divide.
> Why would they constitute “new lows”?
A. Because they were jumping out of the gate to exploit a personal and cultural tragedy for political gain.
It is understandable for the left to focus some attention on Kirk's message because otherwise his objectional political views get folded in and normalized as part of the heroic martyr story. Agreed, that effort can be seen as insensitive, but sensitivity to being insensitive is liberals' burden. The right's superpower is their f--- you attitude about norms and feelings. Liberals think that is bad for society, but are struggling over the tension between upholding values and doing what it apparently takes to win.
A comic’s job is primarily to be funny, not “punch.” (This is Stewart’s fault and gives us the godawful Oliver). This wasn’t any recognizable sort of a joke.
You're right about a comic's job. One way to be funny is by mocking idiocies of the powerful. Rather than a joke proper, Kimmel's barb was one note in a routine that made highly resonant points (to his audience) with humor.
As someone who lives as the sole Democrat in a family of MAGA Republicans, I sympathize because we all somehow get along. That said, your argument implicitly assumes that MAGA is a normal political party, that it shares the same basic commitment to the American Project that we all have taken for granted our whole lives. But that is not necessarily the case and shapes the Left's response to who are more interested in their side "winning" than in politics and who seem unlikely to accept elections they lose
"Political views" covers a lot of ground. If you cut off someone because they constantly harangue you with hateful bs (the MAGA Uncle Scenario, I believe it's called) are you really cutting them off for their "political views"? If someone thinks blacks and gays are subhuman and don't deserve any rights, what's the point of maintaining a relationship, especially if you're black or gay? Someone on the left thinking trans people deserve civil rights is very different from someone on the right thinking trans people should be designated as terrorists.
Thought-provoking perspective for sure. What happened is horrific. I wonder if some of the need to point back to Kirk’s own words and the hurt he’s caused so many is a reaction to the reality that when other politically violent incidents happened - the Hortman murders - there was a deafening silence from Republicans? Including the President who purportedly said he could call and offer condolences but “it would be a waste of time”. Does it seem somehow that one murder is more deserving of mourning than another? And perhaps that comparison whips up added anguish? All violence is wrong, no matter the motivation.
Some Republicans had appalling reactions to the Hortman murders, most notably Sen. Mike Lee. In terms of the public reaction though, I think a key difference is the extremely public nature of Kirk's killing. He was shot in front of a crowd of thousands, on video that has probably been seen by tens of millions of Americans. The video I think very understandably intensifies the public reaction and the trauma that's inflicted on the public. I don't think state or local officials had an affirmative obligation to choose to lower flags (they're not governed by the president's order) but I think to the extent they do make that choice, it doesn't need to be thought of as an endorsement of Kirk's body of work -- it's about mourning a very public attack on our polity (or at least we can choose to think of it that way.)
I disagree with you on the intent of the flag lowering for sure, given it has been followed by the idea of adopting Sept 14th as a national holiday in his honor. That would seem to be an endorsement of his work, not just mourning. My whole point is the hypocrisy of it all. One sided nature of expressing regret and horror over violence. Again, all violence is wrong.
Peripheral to the main point of the post, but if you drift into the wrong part of Substack you find that BlueAnon is very real. There are notes or articles with hundreds or even a few thousand likes (a lot by Substack standards, more than the far right ever gets) expressing the view that the Trump assassination was staged or that the 2024 election was rigged. The difference with the Republicans is that for now, it's almost impossible to find Democratic elected officials who believe this stuff. The occasional Cynthia McKinney or Jamaal Bowman arises in the party but they are rare and fleeting.
It is perhaps natural that people furthest from power will be the most prone to believe conspiracies, and perhaps it is a fluke that MAGA is now in power in the US and there is hope that the post-Trump GOP will contain people with non-conspiratorial views. Or maybe the American left will take the path of the American right. Who knows.
Fantastic piece, and this is my first time reading about Jain's poll and follow-up analysis. While I would never personally cut-off anyone because of their political views, I've still always known that "we" are different, given that we consume far more politics and news than could possibly be healthy for our well-being. But the 40% - 11% split on this issue is staggering, and is really making me reassess the thickness of a bubble I've already presumed to be impossibly thick.
That said, I do detect a bit of irony in your second footnote. Here you spend an entire article (correctly) lecturing liberals on the fact that endlessly obsessing over Charlie Kirk's past quotes is missing the point and just makes us look weirder than we already are. Yet at the same time you are obsessing over the entirely irrelevant distinction of whether or not Kimmel intended to say Robinson "was" MAGA, or was simply observing that MAGA wanted to characterize him as anything but prior to any evidence emerging. I do not understand why you feel the need to continue hammering this point when the much larger issue of state-sponsored censorship remains present and frightening.
Kimmel’s language was sloppy but his implication was clear. He’d somehow convinced himself that groypers really had done it - or worse, didn’t believe it, and wanted to convince his viewers.
I have said for years that politically my beloved fellow liberals (all Democrats) have appeared unable to find their asses with their collective both hands, but now fear that many similarly are unable to find their respective souls.
I was honestly surprised at the genuine impact this had on many friends on the right. More than the normal shock of a televised murder. More than the loss of a beloved entertainer. They took this personally.
I guess I’d have felt that way about Obama circa 2009, but that’s by far the exception for me. But a lot of sensible adult people felt this loss incredibly deeply. They’re not faking this.
They’re expressing it in terms of his Christian witness, his free speech advocacy, and his role as a “good faith debater” of campus kids. I won’t say this to my friends, but I have some trouble buying all that - since these folks never talked about any of those things, even in the abstract.
What I do believe is that they identified with Kirk - as a sort of champion for their side. A happy warrior in Reagan’s mode, he could be genuinely kind and gracious to the hapless blue-haired undergrads he “debated.” But I think the bigger thing was that Kirk was very good at delivering short-form content that Owned The Libs. He invigorated a youth movement on the right, in a way that included that delicious red meat, but didn’t make you feel as gross as Trump, Bannon, or Carlson.
Someone pointed out on bluesky or twitter that many people on the right had a somewhat sheltered view of Kirk. I.e., they had heard about him generally as a Christian, etc., as you relate, without ever having heard his more hateful views. When confronted with actual quotes, they were shocked.
I’m skeptical that anyone could become a fan of Kirk without being exposed to his more combative side.
All the videos are entitled things like “Charlie DESTROYS a liberal!” Or “watch Charlie COMPLETELY WRECK this professor.”
Excellent article, Josh. I've read a variety of pieces on the topic over the past week, but yours is the best so far.
I am friends with quite a few people who tend towards the moral danger zone you describe. One of them is an 80-something old-school Democrat, and he brought up the subject with a "It was wrong that he was shot, but..." (when he then preceded to list a bunch of Kirk stances he disagreed with; probably recited from MSNBC or similar). Sorry, you lost me at the "but" there. I always thought Liberals were defenders of ideological of liberalism, but that's becoming a harder observation to hold these days.
As always, super-smart, level-headed Josh Barro has quite interesting and compelling things to say...
Nevertheless, two sentences, not in connection with each other, point to something at the bottom-- at the split root of our present-day American (not just political) context. He writes, "...we need to be able to share a sense of national identity with people whose values might differ from our own in important ways..."
And later, "...if nearly half the electorate is in breach of your social contract, it’s not much of a social contract."
I don't share a sense of national identity with members of my own family, nor do we follow anything like the same social contract, much less millions of Americans with more toxic views than theirs. And I know I am not alone in this, and the responses (on social media, in person or via text/email) to Charlie Kirk's murder and Jimmy Kimmel's "situation" bear this out.
We do not share a sense of national identity. We have language, the memory (i.e. past) of our shared experiences and vitriol.
I don't know a way forward. I do not have goodwill towards some of my sisters and their (longstanding) repellent views about Trump and women, Trump and immigrants and Trump as, in their words, "an honest broker". It's all utter BS, and these are people I know the best and love the most. I wouldn't mention this here if I remotely thought we were the only family/community like this.
I don't know a way forward, and I'm pretty sure no one here does, and no one else does, either. It doesn't matter what the left or right say and do; the other "side" ignores super-smart level heads, and is gleefully happy to elevate the worst of us.
There have been moments over the last year where I have felt crazy and alone in my perspectives, and then Josh, you always seem to send out a thought provoking piece that feels like an eloquent encapsulation of the thoughts running through my mind.
The one piece of this that has bothered me the most IS the fixation on what the shooters political leanings were. As you eluded, there is not a single example of someone who attempted or committed an assassination who also held sane, logical political platform, so why are we looking for one here? What 'side' he was on is irrelevant. What's scary is that our politics have created an environment where now a series of unstable people in short succession have decided that violence is the only answer.
And our obsessiveness with talking about them, publishing their photos everywhere, picking their lives apart, looking for deeper meaning in their actions and feeding into whatever deluted fantasy they had for legacy, will only create more of them.
We should all fear that. What this guy did is abhorrent. Any argument otherwise or "whataboutisms" makes our country more dangerous.
Never in my life have I been more hesitant to discuss a modern day event with friends and family, for fear of their perspective. It may be the most divisive event I've experienced. Our country cannot sustain like this.
I have stolen your moniker of "reluctant liberal", but after the last few weeks, I don't know how to classify myself anymore.
Thank you as always, especially now, we need brave and balanced perspectives like yours.
Agree 100%. “They” is the most pernicious word in our current climate.