Doug articulates so well what my friends (not just righties) are saying privately the last few days to me: "It's not influencers. I expected that. It's my high school friends, family and coworkers, and that really scares me."
Make all the arguments you'd like about who or what Kirk was, but it can't be disconnected from the mass trauma event of people watching the man's execution. It did serious damage to people. It triggered a part of the human brain that's wired to protect the small village, and it's under attack. Fact checking or right fighting just reads as emotional hardness or cruelty.
If your goal is peace, you've got to lower the temperature. Humans get dangerous when they feel threatened, and plenty of charlatans are standing by to capitalize on it. Other broken boys are watching too.
You can say what you want, but words have a cost. Heightened emotion, context, timing, etc... all raise the price, and sometimes the best course of action is to be quiet. And if you can't, the second best course of action is to repent and apologize if you've done the wrong thing.
I'm not sure how we put this back together with the level of heartlessness towards each other. A culture is only healthy if we are cultivating peace, and using words with care. Others not doing the same isn't a justification for doing it too.
I am perpetually online and spend a lot of time in left wing spaces. I'm sure some celebrated this, but I haven't seen it. Don't think it's mainstream or even as proliferated as Doug mentions. Every Democrat leader or left wing influencer or podcaster I follow has condemned what happened.
But immediately after he was killed, very prominent right wing influencers,elected officials,and party leaders took to Twitter to say that Chicago should be bombed, Democrat leaders arrested and executed, mass violence against democrats stating openly that democrats are terrorists, the left is 100% to blame for this and is at war with "us"; need I remind you that all of this was said before the killer was even identified or any facts or morives were discovered.
I really don't understand at all this narrative that the left is misbehaving or inciting violence. At all. I just don't see it. I see plenty of people basically saying "political violence has no place in America and he did not deserve to die, but I'm not pretending this man was a good person".
And if we can't say something as simple as that, then I don't think the left is the problem. And it's especially poignant coming from the "hate speech is speech" crowd.