WITH MIXED FEELINGS

I have mixed emotions about the shooting of Charles Kirk. I know I am not alone. I misread a Guardian Opinion piece which stated, inter alia:

The shocking killing of the co-founder of Turning Point USA Charlie Kirk,  a hugely influential activist who rallied young people to Donald Trump’s cause and far-right ideology more broadly, has been widely and rightly condemned across the political spectrum. Leading Democrats and progressive activists made clear that such violence must not be tolerated.

I initially understood the phrase “widely and rightly condemned” to be a comment referring to Mr Kirk’s political views, rather than his killing. I thought that was a rather harsh but brave comment coming from the Guardian in the circumstances, until I re-read the paragraph for clarification, which of course was referring to the act of violence.

I later read another article on SUBSTACK by Ricky Hale of Council Estate Media which began:

When I heard that Charlie Kirk had been shot, my first feeling was sadness, and then as people reminded me of the terrible things he had said and done, I did not know what to feel. I had a mixture of emotions, I guess, same as I did when those billionaires took a submarine ride and we all laughed, but I still felt bad for them.    

Here is the thing: you're not supposed to acknowledge the inner-conflict. You're supposed to mourn a dead father and say nice things about him, otherwise you're a terrible person. Also, you're supposed to not give a fuck about his passing, otherwise you're mourning a fascist. However you react, you will make someone mad.   

The thing is, it's okay to feel sad that Charlie Kirk is dead, even though he was a terrible person, and it's okay to joke about him being dead, even though he was a family man. It's okay to feel mixed emotions because we're humans and so much about us is contradictory.

While I feel a tinge of sadness that a fellow human being has lost his life in such awful circumstances, this does not mean I will be shedding tears for him. Charlie Kirk does not deserve my tears. If you did not know much about him, the internet has been quick to remind us how horrendous his views were.   

First of all, Kirk saw empathy as a weakness and joked about the attack on Paul Pelosi. He frequently denied there was starvation in Gaza and excused Israel's genocidal practices. He was a forced birther who said he would make his ten-year-old daughter carry a baby to term if she were raped. He was a horrendous racist who argued that black women were too stupid to be taken seriously. He called George Floyd a "scumbag" and said black people were better off in slavery. At one event, he kept referring to an Asian woman as "chink". He blamed transgender people for gun violence and called for the stoning of gay people. I could go on and on, but needless to say, Kirk was a person who stoked division and incited violence.                                                                                                                                               

I confess Mr Hale’s point of view expresses more of what I feel about the incident. It is indeed very difficult for me not have mixed feelings about the death of a man like Charlie Kirk whose views and influence I abhor. I am clearly not alone. I have frequently written about opposing points of view. It is important to be aware of  other’s views and coming to grips with trying to understand them, however appalling they may seem. For those on the left of the political spectrum, it is necessary to make a distinction between genuine conservative political views and racist bigotry. Indeed, not all socialists are immune from being racist, homophobic or anti-transgender. Political views, philosophies and personal emotions are often not rational. To paraphrase  Richard Rorty when referring to Martin Heidegger, author of Being and Time, ‘there are many great books written by very bad men, Heidegger is just a supreme example’. 

Personal contemplation as to why we exist, or how we came to be, does not necessarily improve the way people interact with each other, particularly when what we come to believe as fact is false or delusional. Much depends on what and how we are taught, or what and how we learn. Again, there is a distinction between teaching and learning. 

So, like Ricky Hale, I cannot shed a tear for ‘influencer’ Charlie Kirk, however I can shed a tear for the American citizens who have to live with the continuing and growing  hostility that will be engendered by this particular act of violence. They are also having to deal with a President who will try to make capital out of the situation for his own personal benefit, and use it to deflect from his own personal responsibility for promoting and creating the climate of violence and division that exists in today’s United States of America, which has led to the killing of Charlie Kirk. 

LIVING WITH DENIAL

Lenny Bruce did a bit in one of his routines about cheating on your partner. “Deny it, don’t admit anything, even if they’ve got pictures, deny it ‘I was just lying down next to her to see which one of us was taller’. Deny it”. Advice Donald Trump seems to have adopted whole sale. In the face of the now published birthday card to Epstein, bearing his signature, he puts out a photo of his signature next to the signature on the card, claiming it is proof he didn’t sign the card, even though it is the same signature. He expects people to believe his denials despite the evidence of their own eyes. There must be another level of brazen we have never seen before, but Donald Trump has scaled the heights. 

The great tragedy is that his acolytes still rally  behind him, repeating and amplifying the lies, in the expectation that it will work and keep what is left of his base on side. And it seems to be working. What on earth is wrong with the congressional republican party members that they continue to prop up this man? The duplicity, chicanery and stupidity, coupled with the narcissistic persona is there for the world to see, and yet western world leaders seem to mollycoddle him because of the office he holds. Is it not time to put a stop to that and call him out? Why is he not putting the weight of his office into cutting off Putin’s regime through more severe sanctions? Why is he not putting more pressure on Netanyahu by withholding supplies of weapons and support in general?

From what I can gather from the reports I see and hear from many citizens in the United States he is reviled. They see him as a would be dictator and are taking to the streets and town halls in protest at his ‘regime’. What is sad is that the rigidity of the written constitution does not seem to allow for his immediate removal, save by way of an impeachment for so called high crimes and misdemeanours  which requires a vote by two thirds of the Senate. We have already seen how that works. It doesn’t, due to the numbers of his republican supporters. It would require a defection of at least 22 Republican senators out of the 53 currently in office. Before that can even happen, the House Of Representatives has to pass a bill of impeachment, which is even more unlikely to happen given that the Republican Party holds 220 seats in the House to the Democrats 213. 

It is clear that the founding fathers never anticipated a person in the shape of a Donald Trump would ever become President of the United States of America, primarily because they never anticipated that the American people would ever conceive of voting for such a person, nor did they ever conceive that the congress would so easily acquiesce to a would be dictator. At the time there was no reason for them to anticipate such an outcome. It will require some changes in legislation to deal with this development, and that does not look like happening any time soon. So the world is locked into Trump for the time being.

Yet again, history shows that societies have allowed atrocities to occur because they believe ‘it can’t happen here’. It clearly can happen and appears to be happening all over the world. Are we too bound up in our own daily travails to notice what is going on around us? How is it that our countries’ economies have allowed for the proliferation of shoplifting and thefts on such a scale as we now have? Why do we have so many world wide scams in operation on such a scale as to be able to blackmail major institutions and corporations? What has happened to us to allow isolationist populist bigoted nationalism to take hold, and elect such people as representatives of our lives? What has happened to concepts of integrity and duty of care? How is it that we allow some people to deny responsibility  even after what we see and hear with our own eyes and ears? What good is mass media if it all amounts to nothing? We are surrounded daily with pictures and sounds of atrocities and some even take to the streets in protest, only to become part of the story, rather than lead to a solution. 

I am full of questions and denials myself, so what is it that will make a difference? Is it another amendment to the constitution of the United States? Is it proportional representation in the United Kingdom? Is it more severe law enforcement? Is it more social constructionism? Or is it just down to “Deny it. Even if they’ve got pictures”?

 

FAILING TO SEE ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW

Expanding one’s news gathering sources is never easy. I have to confess that I probably rely on the Guardian Newspaper and the BBC for overall information. I do watch a lot of YouTube stuff such as Occupy Democrats, Brian Tyler Cohen, Meidas Touch, Rachel Maddow, The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, Late Night with Seth Meyers and other podcasts critical of Mr Trump’s Presidency. I believe that most of these Pod casts come up first when I log in because of google statistics on what I regularly watch. I am sure that if my obsessions were aligned with Fox News and friends, they would be the first to appear on screen. In that sense, it is clear that whatever algorithm monitors my access to the internet, it will continue to provide me with material it believes I would seek out in any event.  It learns to feed me the food I seem to like. This is not good for diversity of thinking. It tends to narrow an already narrow point of view. 

Celia brought in the Saturday edition of The Financial Times, offering another perspective, and one that should be taken into account. In its wikipedia entry it states “Since the late 20th century, its typical depth of coverage has linked the paper with a white-collar, educated, and financially literate readership. Because of this tendency, the FT has traditionally been regarded as a centrist to centre-right liberal, neo-liberal and conservative liberal newspaper. So perhaps not so far removed from The Guardian. In any event I perused the paper.

Trump touted Chinese troops for Kyiv. Donald Trump suggested deploying Chinese troops as peacekeepers in post war Ukraine leading support to a proposal first put forward by Russia’s Vladimir Putin, according to four people briefed on discussions.

EU antitrust chief urges defiance of US - The EU must be prepared to walk away from a trade deal with the US if Donald Trump acts on his threats  to target the bloc unless it alters down its digital legislation.

Cook’s showdown with Trump likely to have broad implications for Fed - Central Bank economist’s defiance against removal threat is no surprise to those who know her. Lisa cook, the first black woman to serve as a Federal Reserve governor, is used to a fight. She has the scars on her eyebrow and leg to prove it.

White House removes secret service protection for Harris.

These are just four headline stories from pages 4 and 5 of the Financial Times Weekend section of the 30th August 2025. They represent the gullibility, stupidity, bullying, pettiness and general cupidity of Donald Trump. Three of which traits - bullying, pettiness and cupidity - he shares with Vladimir Putin. This is not a very different approach to stories emanating from the United States, in relation to its President, taken by quite a number of newspapers around the world. Although the articles do not specifically state that Trump is a stupid gullible petty bully, it is how, from my narrow point of view, I chose to interpret the articles.  How much further afield must I go in order to develop a more equitable and considered point of view? I am clearly in a rut.

There is however a lengthy article about Trump’s interventions in the US financial system and in leading companies. He has apparently received little pushback and the article’s title is A calculated silence. Not being an economist or having any real understanding of financial systems or the ‘market’, I am not in a position to comment with any authority, but a couple of paragraphs in the piece caught my attention.

Joel Griffith, a senior fellow at Advancing American Freedom, wrote on X that the “partial nationalisation of Intel reflects disturbing reality: economic policy is increasingly a mix of ‘internationalist’ socialism on the Left and ‘nationalist’ socialism on the so called ‘New Right’.”

Ilya Somin, the law professor at George Mason, says that Trump has moved the Republican Party from being a relatively conservative, generally free market party, to be more like a European rightwing nationalist party that supports big government.
“Nationalist have a long history of these sorts of interventionist policies that have a lot in common with sort of leftwing socialist policies” he says.

An interesting equation of x=y seems to be the formula; but, whilst the article indicates that most American business leaders claim that “the independence of the Fed is absolutely critical” and “playing around with the Fed can often have adverse consequences”, the big beautiful tax breaks have made their own financial position far more secure, and therefor richer, and so self interest keeps their mouths shut, hence the title A calculated silence.

Like Trump, they couldn't care less about what they leave behind them. The collective short term hedonism of this mob is typical as well as despicable. Trump’s interventions in all areas are already having adverse consequences, but it appears that for a few dollars more, the billionaires of the United Takes of America will stay silent and not intervene in his interventions.