The evil wind blowing through the world expresses itself in Socialist outrage here and Muslim zealots elsewhere. It’s the same performative itch: try to be more devout and abuse everyone else who falls short. That’s not the way. Forgiveness for the past—so we can use the present moment and the future to be more loving—is the way. This is the way.
On September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk was fatally shot in the neck while speaking at Utah Valley University during the kickoff of his American Comeback Tour. The shooter, Tyler James Robinson, 22, fired from a rooftop 142 yards away using a bolt-action rifle. Kirk died shortly after at a nearby hospital.
Robinson was arrested two days later after confessing to a family member. Authorities have physical evidence and online messages linking him to the crime. His motive remains officially unclear, though bullets recovered at the scene were reportedly inscribed with anti-fascist memes and slogans from internet culture.
The Usual Blah Blah Blah
Vice President JD Vance has publicly blamed “left-wing extremism” for Kirk’s death, calling it part of a broader ideological war. President Trump announced plans to posthumously award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Kirk’s podcast is now hosted by Vance, who’s using it to spotlight political violence and call for unity through “truth-telling”.
The killing has ignited fierce debate. A New Jersey doctor resigned after allegedly celebrating Kirk’s death in front of patients, prompting legal action and media coverage. Online reactions have ranged from mourning to partisan vitriol, with some institutions compiling lists of individuals who reacted “inappropriately”.
The dominant conservative framing—especially from figures like Benny Johnson—is that Kirk’s death is the culmination of escalating left-wing violence. The shooter is portrayed not just as a lone actor, but as a product of ideological radicalization. The incident is being used to galvanize support, mourn a martyr, and warn of further unrest
Same Move, Different Stage
Nietzsche, “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” Since we killed God the empty space where he once was left us starving for meaning. Well, what to fill that empty space with? In his absence we mistook our love of Chop Suey for a demand to love Mao Zedong instead. Chop Suey is real Chinese Food and pretty awesome. So, Mao’s Three Red Banners have to be awesome too, right? Who can argue with rapid Socialist Construction, industrial and agricultural miracles, and collective joy and efficiency?
Mao’s Cultural Revolution was an epic fail disguised as progress. An estimated 8 million people died from utopian promises like the General Line, the Great Leap Forward, and People’s Communes. Bonus: an estimated one billion sparrows were killed because they were eating the grain and causing starvation. Locusts? What about them? Maoism arrives here and becomes a festering sore on the soul of progressives.
So here we are, post millennial, all modern and stuff. We have The Internet and Smart Phones and our reusable Whole Foods fair trade grocery bags. Our homes are a temple to sustainable products with low carbon footprints. We voted for Obama and Biden. Our closet has Harris 2024 t-shirts and hats. Mao’s Communism failed because it wasn’t implemented correctly. Mao didn’t try hard enough. We are modern, sophisticated and have TikTok! We can do better. And . . . tbh Charlie Kirk needed to die, just saying.
Because it’s more than “silence is violence”. Kirk was a Nazi and a racist who hated trans-people. His words were murder.
Where Does it Stop?
Ghandi, “an eye for an eye and we’ll all be blind.” That’s a paraphrase. But it makes my point. There is a style of conflict resolution that only knows escalation. Mix that with a need to prove oneself among a peer group that demands performance of all five pillars: grievance, malady, kink, addiction and athiesm. Together the spiritual cancer takes root. It spawns a PICC line on our souls that feeds evil.
Here is the thing. There is no escalation that will get the job done. The Cultural Revolution was a decade in Chinese history. Mao worked hard in that decade. A billion sparrows died at his orders. No more grain eating sparrows, right? Kind of. Turns out they were mostly eating locusts who ate grain. Doh! Queue the Great Chinese Famine. So revolutionary!
Winning! 179 documented incidents from 2016 onward, targeting conservatives, Trump supporters, and Republican institutions. END HATE! END NAZIISM!! IMPEACH THE ORANGE PEEL!!! How is it going for you? Here, I’ll help:
- Physical assaults (e.g. MAGA hat wearers attacked in public)
- Firebombings (e.g. GOP headquarters in North Carolina)
- Vandalism and property destruction (e.g. bricks through Republican offices)
- Threats and harassment (e.g. calls for Trump’s assassination on social media)
- Riots and disruptions (e.g. UC Berkeley canceling conservative speakers due to threats)
- Targeted beatings and mob attacks (e.g. Trump supporter knocked unconscious at airport protest)
Eleven years of good work and what have you accomplished? IMHO, the harder you try, the more you escalate the weaker the result. It’s almost as if escalation hurts the cause more than it damages the targets. Weird.
Maybe This Way
We have struggled with wisdom for at least 4,000 years. In that time people have written down what they learned. Yah. I know. Sheesh. Whatever. Some brilliance for you to admire: The Three Red Banners of Mao’s regime: the General Line, the Great Leap Forward, and People’s Communes. Mao tried pretty hard to bring about the utopia Marx dreamed of. Millions died. Winning!
Instead of proclamations from 中南海 maybe these: the תַּנַ״ךְ, 论语, श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता, 道德經, and Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν. In English, these are the Tanakh, The Analects of Confucious, the Bhagavad Gita, Tao Te Ching, and Meditations. Instead of Five Pillars, maybe these Five Disciplines: Clarity through diligent practice, Stewardship of our lives and those around us, Mercy, Temperance and Faith.
I am Christian. I’ll tell you that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life everlasting. His Way is my Way. What we are in the middle of is Ephesians 6:12, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Romans 12:21 “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” One more, John 1:5, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. This is the Way.
The Regular Rythm
The everyday is sunrise and sunset. It’s the mewling babe and the fading elder, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. It’s the rhythm Shakespeare named and we still live. Spectacular events like Kirk’s murder happen. Bad shit happens. We are heartbroken each time it does. That’s not the everyday, though. Sunrise, sunset, from mewling babe to old age live continues. Do that, do the regular rhythm.
Charlie Kirk’s death was another nail in the coffin of Wokeism, Woke True Folk and Blue Tribe ideology. American Progressivism believed the way to victory was escalation. If a little bullying wasn’t effective, try harder. Try so hard that some of its youth tried to earn membership by murdering deviants. It’s not gone well.
So . . . this is kind of random. But it’s where I want to end. Lilly, my younger cat, had a litter of five kittens yesterday. Three were stillborn, two lived. Lilly and her two newborns are sleeping in the base of a cat tower I bought last year. Those three are the continuing line that extends past me.
The Way and the Truth
Spectacle is a hungry maw. As much as we feed it the appetite for more is unquenched. Each escalation demands more. In 2017 an estimated half-million women marched on Washington for women’s rights because Hair Gropenfuhrer said in 2005 that celebrities acquire privilege through their fame that gives them license to do anything they want with some women—even grab them by the pussy. OUTRAGEOUS!
Yeah. well. We elected him again in 2024. Maybe fun to march for women’s rights but are men any better behaved after the protest? And if the idea was to stop Trump, then . . . that’s not gone well. The promise was an eon of Socialist paradise. The outcome was feckless performance. Woo!
Why not do things that actually work? An eye for an eye and we lose our eyes. Instead, John 14:6, “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” What? You don’t believe the only way to heaven is through Christ? Whatever. I’m doing me.
This is My Way
My ask: use what’s known. For me it’s my Presbyterian discipleship. Left to my own devices I am a hot mess. I have low impulse control. I’m one of those who won’t stop to ask if an idea is a bad idea. I’ll just surge forward and try to do the thing. Being Christian gives me a way to live. Also forgiveness so that I can get on with living in the light.
I know that itch. There must be something NEW and SHINY to govern this empire that no one has ever thought of before. AFAIK there is not. We keep coming back to the same answers captured in thousands of years of wisdom literature.
The Bible compresses millennia of moral reflection into a unified narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. It offers clear ethical imperatives: love God, love neighbor, walk humbly, forgive, serve, resist pride. It is digestible across generations and cultures. The whole canon of wisdom literature is too vast for most of us to digest. But the Holy Bible offers a distilled rhythm—a Cliff Notes of moral clarity, spiritual posture, and enduring truth. This is the Way.