The assassination of Charlie Kirk is not a good thing. Saying that should be a no-brainer, but a lot of people think that it was. They're convinced that because he said things that they disagreed with, he was a terrible human being.
And one lawmaker, who took issue with Kirk's pro-gun stance, is feeling the heat.
To be fair, this guy wasn't alone in this. A lot of people thought that they could make jokes about Kirk's murder by gunfire. They figured it was fair game because he supported the Second Amendment.
But this is just one example of how poorly some of these people are faring.
One by one, the angry residents who had packed the council chambers on Monday night in Palmetto Bay, Fla., stepped to the podium to express their disgust over online comments that a councilman, Stephen Cody, had made about Charlie Kirk.
One man called Mr. Cody’s comments “vile.” Another called them “abnormal and dangerous.” A third man said that the councilman’s Facebook post, which went up a few hours after Mr. Kirk was fatally shot in Utah, “smells like it came out of the pit of hell.”
All three wanted Mr. Cody to resign from office. If that did not happen, a fourth speaker said, “We’ll come after him.” While he did not intend to harm Mr. Cody, he added, “He’s not going to have a very nice life while he’s living here.”
The most contentious civic matters anyone had anticipated this month in Palmetto Bay, a prosperous Miami suburb of 25,000, involved the tax rate and the details of a contract to manage a municipal pickleball facility. But in the last few days, Palmetto Bay, like many communities around the country, has been consumed by the wave of ferocious indignation directed at people who declared their lack of remorse about Mr. Kirk’s death or merely took issue with things he had said or believed.
Campaigns have been mounted to publicly shame these critics, and in many cases to get them fired from jobs or expelled from schools — a conservative version of the cancel culture that only a few years ago was wielded by the American left. Those facing repercussions — more than 100 people, according to one analysis — include police officers, students, medical professionals, public schoolteachers and university professors.
Now, I've been pretty vocal on other platforms about cancel culture. I hate it and I sincerely wish it were never a thing.
But for years, we've seen a lot of good, decent people see their lives destroyed because of relatively mainstream opinions, simply because the mob hated them.
Cody, however, is getting a taste of that.
Why? What did he say?
Well...
The post included a meme with a well-known quote from Mr. Kirk, in which the conservative star said, “It’s worth it 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.”
Mr. Cody, in his own words, added: “Charlie Kirk is a fitting sacrifice to our Lords: Smith & Wesson. Hallowed be their names.”
Mr. Cody said he was trying to make a point about gun violence. “I don’t support violence,” he said. “But I just thought it was incredibly ironic.”
It was, of course, incredibly tasteless.
The thing is, I'm actually fairly convinced that if we could talk to Kirk right now, he'd still say that it's "worth the cost." Especially as he pointed out that we've decided the tens of thousands of automotive fatalities we see each year is "worth the cost" of traveling by car, which is often ignored when people bring up this cost.
There's also the mockery of Kirk's faith, by capitalizing the "L" in "Lords," thus essentially trying to argue that Charlie Kirk actually worshipped firearms instead of our true Lord and Savior.
Yeah, that pisses me off, too.
The thing is, so many people have been only too willing to destroy lives over relatively straightforward and tame positions, that I kind of can't feel bad for someone being under fire, facing losing his elected position, because he said the most tasteless and insensitive thing he could thing of in that moment.
How is anyone on the right supposed to believe this guy actually cares about their needs? Yeah, politics is different from healthcare, law enforcement, or most of the other positions where people have been fired for celebrating Kirk's death, but that doesn't mean people should tolerate some ghoul sitting in an elected position.
I don't actually care if people aren't broken up about Kirk being dead. There are plenty of people on the left who I don't want dead, but would read their obituary with great satisfaction, to paraphrase Mark Twain on the subject. Because that's me, I'm not going to take issue with people on the other side doing the same, even if it's an assassination victim.
But there's a line. There's always been a line.
People like Cody crossed it.
Asking for his resignation isn't an assault on free speech. It's using your free speech to demand the people representing you are actually decent human beings.
