Me and Charlie, Je Suis Charlie, a Lament - 9/12/2025

I am in mourning. Not just for Charlie Kirk, but more so, how the reaction I see to his death from the left is a reflection in my own life. In recent years, I've seen friends disappear. Oftentimes, it's friends who I know come from the opposite side of the political aisle from myself. And I've known, in my heart, that it's because I post on here about my opinions, and express both my reaction to news and the people in it, and too, because I express my own opinions and proposals.

I don't agree with Charlie Kirk on everything. But I do agree with him a lot. Like me, but to some higher degree of energy and effectiveness, probably by multiples of hundreds of thousands or millions, Charlie, too, expressed his opinion. What has become clear, disturbingly, uncomfortably, and strikingly clear to me in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and the reaction to it from the left, is that my disagreement, like his, is characterized as hatred.

Thousands and thousands of people on the left, in these last 36 hours or whatever it's been, are celebrating the execution of a man who dared to disagree and to take his disagreement to the fortresses and not sole, but a primary source of progressive thought: universities. How provocative! How evil! How dastardly!

You see, our disagreement is interpreted as hatred. By "our" I mean mine and Charlie's, to mention just the two at hand. When I say "Boys and men do not belong in girl's bathrooms," "men don't belong in women's sports," "there are only two genders," and that "teenage genital mutilation is wrong in our morality and society." I become labeled a trans-phobe, someone who hates or fears trans-people. When I say that "DEI and reparations are a mistake in our society," I'm a racist. And when I say "unchecked, insane immigration policies will undermine and destroy American culture as we know it," I am a xenophobe who hates brown people. I understand, the left has deemed all these issues are firmly, fully, and fnally decided and continued disagreement from me or Charlie counters goodness and morality. God forbid we articulate these opinions and say our opinions are predicated on our faith, this is even worse!

I have seen many, many mischaracterizations of things Charlie said. I think everything and more like what's in the preceding paragraph becomes how and why it's mischaracterized. Evils like trans, homo, xeno phobias and racism don't warrant or deserve a fair hearing, do they? I mean, they're already fully understood to be evils. Why would such provocative and destructive dialog warrant attention?

I've watched friends disappear from my life, largely since Trump was elected. Since the election of 2016 coincided with my retirement, maybe some of that is just the nature of retiring. On the other hand, the politics of the people who've disappeared is overwhelmingly left of center. I have to wonder, were I a prominent voice like Charlie Kirk, would they be secretly celebrating my assassination, too? A stretch? I don't think so. Thousands and thousands of people on the left are openly celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The iceberg theory applies here, there is way more ice underwater that you can't see, than that which is visible above the water's surface. For every celebrant I see, there are hundreds and thousands I don't see. Further, the justifications, veiled and thinly veiled or openly shared, to explain why Charlie's death makes sense to them, informs me: I am on the evil side of the ledger as far as they're concerned. It is disturbing and painful to accept that, but I do.

Charlie Kirk would want me to continue to express myself and to stay engaged. I will have to find a way forward, knowing how friends and former friends judge me, hate me, and why they excommunicated me from their lives, perhaps secretly or not so secretly wishing me dead, too.

I wish I could say, "I don't give a fuck," but I do.