TURNING POINT, AMERICA?

Along with the measured responses to Charlie Kirk's murder there's a lot of seething online anger.  Start, dear reader, with Hot Air's David Strom smacking the critical theory commonplaces down.

You have to understand the fundamental principle of modern Critical Theory, which is that words are weapons, and using the wrong words, even if they are "true," is an act of violence. And, modern leftists believe, violence of this kind should be met with violence in the world. Shooting Charlie Kirk because he said the wrong things wasn't violence, but self-defense.

That's an idea so crazy only an intellectual can believe it, and, unsurprisingly, they do.

It shouldn't shock you that randos on the internet celebrated Kirk's death, but it should shock everybody that teachers, professors, and Deans of colleges are. They are not random people, but ones who are in positions of responsibility who teach the next generation how to think and behave.

As do street preachers.

This Chicago-born suburbanite brought all of the racial innuendo to political speech and rhetorically violated the safety and security of Blacks, people of-color, the LGBTQIA community, perverted the history of race and racism in America, attempted to legitimize the nation as a white bastion of civilization and Christianity, and in general perfected the use of racial and hateful language and molded it into a form of acceptable and legitimate political debate and viewpoint.

But the legitimate debate aspect was far from legitimate historical benign speech, nor was it nonviolent in character. In fact, it touched all of the refrains of the vile language of the past that resulted far too many times in lynchings and other forms of racial violence and upheaval.

That seems to be the talking point at Common Dreams.

We can honor the sadness millions are feeling over Kirk’s murder, and maintain basic civil human decency, while also being honest about the deeply harmful and offensive things Charlie Kirk said. We can condemn political violence and Kirk’s murder while also condemning Charlie Kirk for the rotten, vile hatred he fomented.

And yes, while respecting that many are mourning, this is precisely the time to remind people of the hatred and division Kirk sowed and profited handsomely from.

That post goes on to argue that words are violence.  Such a totalitarian idea, and it's breeding resistance.  Connecticut senator Chris Murphy, who cheats on his wife, is not doing much to lower the temperature.  “We're in a war right now to save this country. And so you have to be willing to do whatever is necessary in order to save the country.”  That's what some of the participants in the futile and stupid gesture in the Federal Capitol also believed.

Ben Shapiro, who has his own scorn for that "words are violence" nonsense, fears a mood shift.

The rising tide of violence on the left has become more and more virulent over the course of the last several years. The argument that speech is violence, to be met with violence; the argument that opposition to contention amounts to a form of “genocide” or “erasure”; the argument that political opponents are moments away from ending our republic outright. These views all trend toward revolutionary violence.

And the wave of violence, a wave already breaking on the shoreline, appears as though it is only the beginning. It has already destroyed Charlie Kirk’s family and ended his life at the age of 31.

But it feels as though a tsunami is coming. The water has already receded from the shoreline. And what comes next could be far more devastating even than what we have seen thus far.

That tsunami, if left unchecked, will wash away this entire republic.

Slate's Molly Olmstead also fears a mood shift.  "On the Right, Charlie Kirk’s Death Feels Like 'Crossing the Rubicon.'"  The post rounds up much of the seething anger.  Victoria Taft sees in that mood shift one, two, a thousand Charlie Kirks.

You don't think there's an army of people out there willing and able to take Charlie Kirk's message forward?

Fox News's resident wordsmith, Greg Gutfeld, declared that the assassin had more impact than he realizes: "You woke us the f**k up."

When the assassin's bullet took out a man who possibly could have been president someday, do you think the truth of Charlie Kirk's message was snuffed out?

Hardly. It unleashed an army of followers.

And they are legion.

I've noticed one thing in most of the commentary from the populist right: references to "they" killed Charlie Kirk.  Same sort of rhetoric I recall from sixty years ago when "they" killed John Kennedy.  In the earlier instance, no, it was a waif who got lucky; in the current instance let's see what law enforcement turns up.

Logic aside, David Strom is not done raging against the organized left.

Republicans feel...hunted. As in literally hunted by Democrats who are constantly talking about "days of vengeance" and being at "war" with us because we are an "existential threat to democracy" and "Nazis" who are committing "genocide."

Mitch "Shot in the Dark" Berg has similar thoughts.

But who knew – when the leaders of a party full of mentally unstable people chant that their opponents are “Nazis” and “Fascists”, people my grandfathers’ generation spent the best years of their lives killing and trying not to be killed by, that someone in that mass of unstable weirdos would take it seriously?

As does Mark Hemingway.  "Violence has long been woven into the fabric of the American left, and until we honestly reckon with that, a bleak political future awaits."  And my Chicago Boyz colleague Mike.  "The Left has undergone a very deliberate project of letting the demons out and it will be very hard to put them back."

The Babylon Bee stings.  "Democrats Condemn Violence They Incited," concluding, "At publishing time, Democrats published a list of prominent conservative leaders they promised to condemn violence against if violence were ever committed against them."

Kurt Schlichter, of course, is in fine fettle.  Note, again, the "they."

They may have killed him, but they’re not going to kill the movement he started. Oh no, they don’t get to win. They don’t get to murder their way to victory. They don’t get to scare us, intimidate us, or decapitate our movement. We’re going to double down.

The Democrats are out there with their weasel words today, taking a pause from calling all of us fascists – including, just the day before he was murdered, Charlie Kirk specifically – to express their sorrow and grief. They mouth the right words, but their words are empty. They are lies. The leftists are sorry that they’re going to get tarred, appropriately, with the same brush as this killer(s). After their acolytes tried to wipe out a Republican congressional softball team, went rampaging through various Christian schools, and attempted twice to kill Donald Trump – succeeding in killing Corey Comperatore – their lamentations ring empty. I don’t believe a damn word of them. They call us Nazis – what do you think they want to happen to us?

We must mourn, but we must rally. We’re feeling a cold fury that other enemies of America have felt the effects in the past – including the semi-humans who attacked us 24 years less a day ago. But these are domestic enemies, and indulging our fury is not the answer. Oh, that doesn’t mean we don’t buy guns and ammunition. That doesn’t mean we don’t lawfully conceal carry. That doesn’t mean we don’t meet direct violence with lawful violence in return. We can and will defend ourselves.

The leftists are giggling with delight. This is no surprise to us in the fight, but normals will be repelled – for that reason, we should encourage leftists to share their malignancy freely. But understand that they hate you and literally want you to be murdered.

Whether the information operations turn kinetic remains to be seen.

We have been trying to "lower the temperature" through meek appeasement for 60+ years, and all it has gotten us is ever-increasing hate rhetoric calling us "Nazis" and the like, and ever-increasing Leftist violence.

Now we are going to take ACTION to lower the temperature you… https://t.co/apfsQ0Sn4U

— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) September 11, 2025

So far, fisticuffs are rare.  But Tom "Tilting at Windmills" Knighton is done turning the other cheek.

Being reasonable doesn’t do anyone any good since all I’m doing is talking to the reasonable people on this side of the aisle and accomplishing nowhere near as much as I’d like.

I’m scuttling a series of posts I hoped to write where I tried to find some common ground, where we could approach a policy from different sides to yield the same result. I simply don’t care to reach out anymore.

I told myself that most leftists weren’t evil. I told myself that most of them really did believe they were good people and were just trying to make the right call each day, even if I disagreed with their conclusions.

Today, I’m not buying that.

Today, I see that far too many on the left see assassination as a viable strategy in opposing views they disagree with. I see that many of them are just fine with killing the opposition.

He concludes, "So we live in unreasonable times, and I’m done being the reasonable man....It’s a new day, and I’m done playing nice."

For my part, I might be incorporating Turning Point USA into my rotation of holiday donations.