"I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights."—Charlie Kirk, April 5th, 2023
The photo posted above (from Sky News) was taken today in Orem, Utah at a Utah Valley University campus rally conducted by Kirk's conservative Turning Point USA. Moments later he was shot in the jugular by a stlll-at large assassin. He died. I saw him get hit. It was terrible, blood spurting wildly out of his neck as if out of a firehose. Had to have been a skilled sniper. Authorities estimate the single lethal shot came from a rooftop approximately 200 yards away.
Kirk was shot in the throat moments after saying there had been "too many" mass shootings involving trans people in response to a question from an audience member, who then asked the Turning Points USA head how many mass shooters there had been in the U.S. over the past decade.
“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk replied. One second later a bullet tore into the left side of his neck.
UPDATE
6 pm Sept 11th, while the weapon has been found in nearby woods (.30 cal bolt-action long rifle), no shooting suspect yet personally ID'd or in custody. Left vs Right mutual political vitriol is at continuing eardrum-splitting volume.
FRIDAY SEPT 12th
The Kirk shooting suspect has been located and arrested in southern Utah. 22 year old male from Washington UT (just NE of St. George).
INTERESTING YOUTUBE SEGMENTS
CHARLIE KIRK ON THE 2nd AMENDMENT
'eh?
Above. Very good 36 minute piece, except for an annoying 2.5 minute ad for fancy linens commencing at 6:56.
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TOPICALLY APROPOS
Saw this fellow interviewed on PBS Newshour Thusday evening. Looked him up. Teaches at Dartmouth. Another book to jump the BobbyG VIP rope line.
A riveting, vividly detailed collage of political and moral derangement in America." —Joseph O’Neill, New York Times Book Review
One of America’s finest reporters and essayists explores the powerful currents beneath the roiled waters of a nation coming apart.
An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies—sometimes realities—of violence.
Across the country, men “of God” glorify materialism, a gluttony of the soul, while citing Scripture and preparing for civil war—a firestorm they long for as an absolution and exaltation. Lies, greed, and glorification of war boom through microphones at hipster megachurches that once upon a time might have preached peace and understanding. Political rallies are as aflame with need and giddy expectation as religious revivals. At a conference for incels, lonely single men come together to rage against women. On the Far Right, everything is heightened—love into adulation, fear into vengeance, anger into white-hot rage. Here, in the undertow, our forty-fifth president, a vessel of conspiratorial fears and fantasies, continues to rise to sainthood, and the insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, killed on January 6 at the Capitol, is beatified as a martyr of white womanhood.
Framing this dangerous vision, Sharlet remembers and celebrates the courage of those who sing a different song of community, and of an America long dreamt of and yet to be fully born, dedicated to justice and freedom for all.
Exploring a geography of grief and uncertainty in the midst of plague and rising fascism, The Undertow is a necessary reckoning with our precarious present that brings to light a decade of American failures as well as a vision for American possibility. [Amazon blurb]
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