I don’t really write about politics on here mostly because I feel like there are many people who do and most of them are better at it than I would be. When I do it, it’s either because I think I have a genuinely persuasive case or a call to action. This time, however, I don’t really have either. Sometimes I think that what’s important is not what you’re saying but standing and being counted.
There is a very predictable cycle of event, outrage, backlash. It goes like this:
something very bad happens (in this case, Charlie Kirk’s murder);
some people, privately and publicly, are ghoulish about it;
there is a rush to condemn this group of people on the part of writers whose brand involves reasonableness, responsibility, even-handedness;
but what will actually happen, and which any child could have seen coming, is a gigantic backlash from those with actual power in this scenario;
however, at this point, the even-handed people have already said what they have to say and everything else, no matter how heartfelt, comes off as a tacked-on postscript: btw, abusing the FCC to get your critics off the air is also bad.
Unlike, I would guess, many writers on Substack, I think I have an audience that is fairly ideologically diverse. So to spell some things out: of course I think murder is wrong. Other things are also wrong. I went to Mass and sat through a homily about how Charlie Kirk died for the faith; that is a lie, and lies are also wrong. Exploiting an act of violence to make sure nobody ever makes fun of you on TV ever again is wrong. In America you get to make fun of the president once per hour on the hour if you so choose. Those are the rules.
Earlier this year, I wrote something trying to make sense of my own political reactions at
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One thing which I suppose I was trying to work out in that post was my own tendency toward saying “but what about” to myself. What about this, what about that. I can certainly conjure up many “but what about” reactions to what I have written. And I feel quite despairing about my own ability to act according to my conscience much of the time. But at some point, these feelings don’t matter that much. The knowledge that most people in politics at this time are craven and stupid, the feeling that I myself am a fairly useless person who still can’t drive a car—OK, sure.
But it still matters to say that what is happening is wrong. It is state repression. It is wrong. Sometimes you should say these things, even if it seems pointless. So I’m saying it. It’s wrong. The president and his crew are lunatic clowns who wants to make it impossible for anybody to say so in a venue that might matter. This venue does not matter but I will still say so.