DALLAS DID NOT KILL JACK KENNEDY.

What turned out to be Charlie Kirk's final tweet invoked another story that has riled up the Normals.  I'm only able to quote the text of the post.  "If we want things to change, it's 100% necessary to politicize the senseless murder of Iryna Zarutska because it was politics that allowed a savage monster with 14 priors to be free on the streets to kill her."

Weekend public protests in the wake of Mr Kirk's death tended to be mannerly mourning.  Perhaps the cooler heads will prevail.

The title of my post comes from an observation by Outside the Beltway's Michael Bailey in "The Seductive Allure of Collective Blame."  He objects to blaming "the left" or the alphabet people as a group for Mr Kirk's death, invoking, if perhaps being too young to understand why, the longstanding references to Dallas as where "they" killed Kennedy.  "[W]e must be scrupulous in rejecting collective guilt."  Although he's having none of collective guilt, his introduction inadvertently brings up the origin story of "they killed Kennedy."

In the 1960 election, Dallas, Texas, voted for Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy. By 1963, after Kennedy began to advocate more forcefully for civil rights, his already-low popularity in Dallas plummeted even further. Some aides warned him not to travel there for security reasons, but Kennedy wanted to keep Texas in play for the 1964 elections, so he chose to go. And then, of course, he was assassinated.

Yes, and Dallas was home to General Edwin Walker and lots of unreconstructed southern sentiments; and Adlai Stevenson got a nasty reception there a few weeks before that campaign trip.  But "they" killed Kennedy arose as early as with the publication of William Manchester's The Death of a President, and that sort of thinking might have been balancing the cosmic scales.  Mrs Kennedy, who commissioned the book, had trouble squaring her husband's death in such a reactionary place with the evidence pointing to some "creepy little commie."  In popular discourse, the "they" refer to those reactionaries: that affects Stephen King's time-travel thriller as well as the discourse of the coastal cosmopolitans.

Tyler Cowen, in his paid Substack platform, offers similar reservations to any attachment of collective guilt.

At a time when the radical left and the radical right are on the rise, the last thing America needs is a new dose of collectivist thinking. So, in the wake of the murder of Charlie Kirk, my counsel is this: Judge individual people, not groups. Stop saying “they did this,” when it is individuals who act and choose.

One claim I have seen on social media since Wednesday—and for that matter, from our president—is that “the left” murdered Charlie Kirk. I would instead consider the individual who has been charged with the murder, namely Tyler Robinson. “The left,” if you do wish to regard that notion collectively, has said and done many objectionable things along the way, but it did not pull the trigger.

Suggesting otherwise isn’t just to argue a falsehood. It’s also a bad tactic. Blaming a group of people for a murder they did not commit is hardly going to persuade those individuals to adopt more sensible political positions.

We may be beyond persuasion, but that's for another day.  As Mr Bailey notes, the guilty person is the person who pulls the trigger.  "Lee Harvey Oswald killed John Kennedy. He may have had help from other individuals or groups, but Oswald pulled the trigger, and he bore the guilt. Perhaps others deserved punishment as well."  That's the problem.  Oswald was a Communist sympathizer, and there were prominent Communists who might have wanted the Kennedys dead: but nobody activated Oswald as a sleeper agent.  Probably just as well, there is no intelligence officer that would get within ten meters of Oswald, as there is no mob boss that would get within ten meters of Jack Ruby.  But where does generalized wishful thinking turn into action?  "'People don't have any intention of saying something that's gonna lead to something dangerous, but we cannot take responsibility for the minds that are out there and how they hear it,' Nancy Pelosi said during a press conference this week."

🚨 WTF?! Nancy Pelosi just DEFENDED Democrats’ vioIent rhetoric after the kiIIing of Charlie Kirk

Get this evil old hag out of Congress

“People don't have the intention of saying something that will lead to something dangerous BUT we cannot take responsibility for the minds… pic.twitter.com/RG9si1qSVs

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) September 12, 2025

You know full well that the entire Pajamas Media - Town Hall nexus will be calling attention to any such rhetoric out of the Democrats or the tolerant and compassionate left.  Pravda can publish something supporting the elimination of the bourgeoisie; they bear no direct responsibility for some creepy little commie acting on it.  A prominent Democrat or six can refer to Trumpian populists as fascists; they bear no direct responsibility for some messed up late adolescent acting on it.

It's all too much for Jonathan Turley.

Democrats have admitted that the rhetoric is causing many to consider violence.  One House Democrat told Axios, “Some of them have suggested … what we really need to do is be willing to get shot.”

Yet another admitted that constituents have told them to prepare for “violence … to fight to protect our democracy.” Others reported that liberals are talking about the need “to storm the White House and stuff like that.”

One explained that “They’re angry beyond things.” Another said, “It’s like … the Roman coliseum. People just want more and more of this spectacle.”

Some are discussing triggering or staging violence. One member said, “What I have seen is a demand that we get ourselves arrested intentionally or allow ourselves to be victims of violence, and … a lot of times that’s coming from economically very secure white people.”

In one encounter, a lawmaker told Axios: “I actually said in a meeting, ‘When they light a fire, my thought is to grab an extinguisher’. And someone at the table said, ‘Have you tried gasoline?’”

However, when such arson and other violence occur, Democrats are mystified that anyone would point to their own rhetoric and responsibility. When the alleged shooter of Charlie Kirk was found to have scrawled antifa messages on his bullets, the response was again denial and deflection.

Their logic is accurate, and yet "Antifa" did not kill Charlie Kirk, somebody who might have been influenced by Antifa rhetoric did.  As we hit the upload key, it appears to be a mostly quiet night with isolated acts of foolishness at campus vigils and the Brewers with a rest day after making the playoffs.