The Red Line
Studying history makes the scholar aware that a major event often has unexpected causes. The pattern that follows after a “black swan” event, though, is intelligible looking back, but was nothing obvious when moving forward. Many civilization have crossed a red line without knowing it, although everyone acts “as if” they do somehow, someway.
I believe the Charlie Kirk shooting was one of those events, and though I am probably shouting into a void where no one else is likely to care or pay attention, (which itself is indicative of having crossed the event horizon of badness) I’m gonna say it anyway on the off chance someone is still paying attention.
Turning Point
Turning Point, the political entity that Kirk founded, is really where the thirty-somethings gained footing in 2016. Kirk was part of that crowd and was doing something I, a not now thirty-something, have done in the past. He went around engaging in the old-school Greek debate style. This kind of debate is confrontational and is designed to develop a person’s logic and rhetoric so that an argument can be considered on the merits of its constituent pieces and axioms. If anything is Democratic, which is, after all, a Greek word in origin, it is debate. This style of debate sits at the very foundation of the Athenian ideal and schools of philosophy that underpin the concept of nation states that represent the voice of the people. The banner of “Change My Mind” is exactly what a debator is supposed to suppose—that an opposite party has a strong case that might make the person hold a different position than the one they enter the debate carrying. This is what Kirk did. He was good at it. Whether or not anyone ever changed his mind, I do not know, but then, the purpose of old debate often led to slow changes. A good example of this in American history are the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Did those debates change anyone’s mind? I cannot say for sure, but I know the bullets that flew in the Civil War changed more than a few minds into compost.
Charlie’s Situation
The contrast for Charlie Kirk against say, Alexander Pretti, is that Charlie Kirk was not armed with anything other than a microphone and the freedom of speech that goes along with having the right to it that the American country says it is founded upon. Pretti, by contrast, was carrying a Sig Sauer in the middle of what is called a protest despite the fact that what he actually was at was a law enforcement action. Traditionally, if you protest say, a tank in the middle of a square in a given country, you probably are going to get a very good view of the underside of the vehicle as your skull cracks while the treads mash you into an undesirable meatloaf. You do not, in any other country I have seen, get to call police interference a “protest”. Whatever Alexander Pretti thought he was doing, he was coming armed for a fight with bullets. Not so with Kirk. For that, we all got treated to seeing the artery in his neck opened and his blood flow out on the stage he was sitting upon. Then, after a funeral, everybody sort of just went back to being “normal”—like seeing a man murdered on live television for speaking is just another youtube vid. Now, of course, the world is awash in the vile contents of the Epstein files, which, if you have known me at all in the past, you probalby have some recollection of conversations I had discussing the kind of material contained in those files and the corruption behind it. Where are all those people I talked to about such things? Also, it would seem, asleep.
What Can We Do?
That’s the question I’ve heard about a zillion times in the past six or seven years. It is a question cowards pose. It is a question that people with no imagination for solving a problem pose. If you can figure out how to spend a lot of money to have fun, you can also figure out how to spend a lot of money to address these kinds or problems. Also, you can get involved with other people who are trying to solve these problems, and support them. Of course, time has taught me this is not now the typical response. Instead, people see something like Charlie Kirk, and usually they do indeed find their own “turning point”, but it isn’t toward meaningful action but toward a kind of mind-numbing tedium that forgets all about what was just witnessed. Instead, the dialog shifts to a joker—an Alexander Pretti—and about his rights to carry a weapon. The guy who did not carry a weapon other than the microphone and the realm of ideas? “Ah, screw ‘em! He got what was coming to him because he said some stuff that upset people, right?” The hypocracy is astounding, and the churches and their congregations are not doing a better job by preaching about penitence and the End of Days while driving about in SUVs in slightly under a million dollar homes. These are fake Christians, and I’d argue that the people who debate about Alexander Pretti but dismiss the clear example of Charlie Kirk are fake Americans and are probably also fake human beings.
Post Truth
When I say all the above, though, I don’t expect to change anyone’s mind. For that, you had the messenger of Charlie, and he was several degrees nicer than me. No, I do not really even expect anyone to read these words and consider them. I certainly do not expect anyone to read this and to try to contact me and talk about the contents of what I’ve written. That time is gone. We are in a post-truth world. I write only for one purpose—at least in this case—and that is to condemn the complacent world. When you go before the Throne of the Holy One, you won’t be able to say that you did not know better or have any other kind of voice out there that offered a different narrative that provided, at least hopefully, some clarity. You will instead say you chose the dark because you wanted to be deaf and blind because that is a better state to be in to enjoy all the luxuries of the world than to have to feel like you might need to take action to solve the problem outlined here. If anything, my blog is a billboard of problems no one wants to solve, think about, or hear. While one might think such a conclusion is an intolerable world in which to live, consider that you are all ready living in it. You just haven’t fully realized it yet. Of course, maybe if you do, and enough other people do, you might change things. You might, to quote Charlie’s org, hit some kind of turning point.
Super Bowls
Tonight, of course, Turning Point is putting on an alternative half-time show, and that’s cool and all, but I hardly give a damn about a game in the middle of a war, and I surely do no care about the entertainment it offers. A dude was murdered right on TV, and four months later (nearly five now), people basically remember him as an afterthought in the middle of a game played for amusement. Butts fill the TV rooms and the couches, but not so many fill the pews. More than a few that fill the pews spend their time planning the next big football party with their friends when they should be repenting to God and asking sincerely for His mercy on a completely backwards nation. That’s the new “game”. That’s the new “fun”. All those other kinds of amusements become not a priority at the point a nation and its people become insane. The wrath of God is not, by any account, entertaining.
But I’m an Atheist/Hedonist/Whatever
Look, I’m gonna reason squarely with you on these points, I don’t care what you are. If you don’t want to be shot in the neck because someone doesn’t like you, then you better pay attention to what happened to Charlie Kirk. No, gun control is not going to solve the problem of someone shooting you in the neck. It just changes who might be the one doing it. What changes this dynamic, if anything can, will be an outpouring of spirit of God. You, though, since you don’t believe in any of that, just don’t get shot in the neck as easily. Others also won’t. I would classify that as a “good deal.”
But I’m Lazy And Don’t Care About People Getting Shot On TV
Great. Use that at the Throne of Judgment. At least, though, you are getting honest.
The Red Line Has Been Crossed
It was a line painted with the blood of someone trying to use their right to reach the minds of others to think about why they believed what they believed. The future is assuming the next consequence from the action and lack of action around this event. It has all ready hit the point of no return, and nobody is really listening. For these reasons, I shout into the void. Of course, I’d rather go into a void shouting than saying nothing at all. Who knows who might accidentally hear? If no one does, then at least I know God heard it. Perhaps He is my only audience. I cannot think of a better one, in any case.